The Bennet Wardrobe Series demands a lot of its readers. While the story arc grows from Jane Austen’s definitive Pride and Prejudice, the eight volumes are speculative fiction exercises.
I began writing the Wardrobe stories using Robert A. Heinlein’s underlying authorial conceit, solipsism—writing fiction creates worlds in which that fiction becomes reality. That meant I was allowed the freedom to explore Jane Austen's universe.
To further explore how the three lesser daughters were anything but that, I made their diminution an editorial decision by the family’s biographer. This unmarried woman had also written similar books about the Woodhouses and Elliots, to name two. Since biographies are assumed to be factual accounts, this permitted me to look at Mary, Litty, and Lydia (as well as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet) as people with unreported facets. Accepting their reality led me to ask why they were shaped as they were. Throughout the series, I found satisfactory rationales for the personalities chronicled by Austen. The backstory is, to me, all important to understand why characters act as they do.
Another underlying principle was my consideration of Austen’s freezing the three sisters and their parents in a two-dimensional form: Mary was a prosy moralist, Lydia was on her way to a brothel, Mrs. Bennet was flighty (charitable, I know), Mr. Bennet indolent, and Kitty coughed. Yes, Elizabeth was impertinent, and Jane floated serenely over everything. Darcy glowered. Wickham was just plain bad. Bingley flopped around like a setter pup. Caroline was acid...and brittle. Need I go on? Would the sisters (all of them) be the same at forty-five as they were in their late teens?
That question brought the Wardrobe into existence...for now, all Bennets could escape the Regency if they could not learn what they needed in that timeframe. From that grew the entire arc of the Wardrobe Series, beginning with The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey to The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy.
Ultimately, the Wardrobe became a character of sorts, embodied in The Old One, who established all universes. In line with Kurt Vonnegut’s imperative of writing, The Old One needed something: to re-establish the balance in the universe, as exemplified by Darcy and Elizabeth’s love.
But even to The Old One, the solution was not apparent as it involved the one force on par with its own: love. Thus, the great creator built alternate universes—probability bubbles/Days of Brahma/Kalpa—in which experiments could be undertaken to ascertain outcomes before attempting them in the immutable timeline of Brahmin Prime.
That’s the general idea. How does it work in A Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle?
As the book stretches across several timelines and books in the main series found in Prime, I decided that The Old One generously listened to the yearning of the one Bennet—Kitty—alienated from her family by time. She wanted to see her kin again. However, the Wardrobe was unwilling to allow her to complete her cycle (yet) and return to 1811. She would in 1932 after her husband died and her children were on their own.
Mr. Bennet also wished to see Kitty again (the 1811 visit by a sixty-three-year-old Lady Kate had already happened to the 1814 Thomas). Mrs. Bennet never saw Kitty after she translated from 1811 to 1886. Her desire to see her fourth daughter spurred the action in Volume Six, The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament.
And then there were the other four sisters, who had farewelled Thomas in early 1815 and Fanny in 1817. What would another hour or three with their parents mean to them?
Thus, the Wardrobe created Kalpa 1846. Into this probability bubble (1919), The Old One inserted the Bennets, Darcys, Bingleys, Bentons, and Fitzwilliams from 1814 and 1827. This alternate universe grew from the most potent force of all—love, exemplified by the search for Family and Home. The Old One’s generosity of spirit allowed all the greatest gift of all: Time.
A Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle charts the events needed to get the family together for a Christmas dinner in 1919. Beginning in Prime, the story builds to a climax in Kalpa 1846.
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A Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle is available for preorder through November 26, 2024.
Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle US
Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle UK
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Please enjoy this excerpt from A Bennet Wardrobe Christmas Miracle ©2024 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.
Chapter Seventeen
The men’s return brought both performance and conversation to a standstill. Each gentleman gravitated to his lady—all except Darcy. He lagged behind the others, eventually finding his way to stand by Elizabeth’s side. Darcy quickly bowed to Mrs. Bennet, murmured an excuse to his wife, and cut across the room to the central doorway through which he disappeared.
By this time, Bennet had carefully lowered himself onto the couch, leaning against the arm with a relieved sigh. Darcy’s departure caused him to lean forward and look over his wife at his daughter. Lizzy shrugged one shoulder. “William claimed the need to refresh himself in our suite.
“He is certainly not in ill humor, poking fun at himself for his missish behavior in preferring the privacy of our WC over the one in the front hall.”
Bennet exhaled in a great gust. He beckoned at Hill, holding his hand out to be hauled again to his feet. “I find my son’s wisdom impeccable. Earl Eleven’s fine port is having its way with this old man’s blad…system. Rather than struggle with the hallway water closet, with the emphasis on the word ‘closet,’ I will avail myself of the facilities in the chamber set aside for Fanny and me.
“I only wish I had the presence of mind to remain upstanding rather than sinking into this fine divan despite the pleasant company.” He patted Fanny’s leg affectionately.
Steadying himself, Bennet shuffled across the room and out the door, followed by one of Hill’s footman nephews.
***
Darcy’s excuse had been just that. He could not remain in close quarters with Elizabeth lest her pained expression weaken his resolve and fracture his indifferent façade. Throughout dinner, his insides curdled as his proximity with the Bennets—both of whom he knew to be dead ten years and more—fanned the embers of his fears for Elizabeth upon his demise. At the end of the separation of the sexes, he did the pretty by his hostess, greeted Elizabeth, and exited. His dignified retreat did not fool his wife. Both knew that he could not abide company, not even that of his family, when the black dog had sunk its fangs into his soul.[i]
Her quiet dignity accepting his excuse made it even more difficult to show his back to the room where she was the brightest light.
Light…an appropriate word, that: his mood was so dark that he feared it would extinguish any attempt to limn his world. Selkirk’s grand staircase was well lit, but Darcy’s eyes were turned inward as he climbed into the mezzanine. Muscle memory prevented a tumble.
On the stage where the staircase split to access the new wings, Darcy took the third path into a dark maw leading to the Selkirk’s hall of ancestors.
Selkirk’s Great Gallery, a two-story tunnel, stretched along the castle’s towering old front. The passage suited him. Although engulfed in nighttime’s stygian gloom, ceiling-high arched windows allowed the December moon crevices for its watery light. Red turned chocolate brown, and blue became black in this selenic realm. Portraits of Darcy’s Fitzwilliam ancestors and, he well knew, those who would come after him, stared at the frozen panes.
His stroll carried him past monochromatic giants rendered flat on canvas’s broad expanse.
How many of these notables were titans, and how many others thought their greatest accomplishment was to be a sprig on the Fitzwilliam tree?
That was a question Darcy rarely considered since his experiences with Fitzwilliams—either for good or ill—were never with nonentities littering every genealogy. Whether Richard’s father or Lady Catherine, strong-willed was an appropriate adjective.
Then, a surprise froze his feet on the Berber runner.
Georgiana!
Or, rather, not exactly his Georgie, as this one’s Darcy features were softened. He saw a hint of Elizabeth’s cheekbones and nose. Hands strengthened and lengthened by twenty years before the ebony and ivory board were absent. The Darcy signet gleamed on her right index. She was different; although young, not yet twenty, she was comfortable holding power. He could imagine her grasping the reins of a nation. Darcy shook his head, trying to dispel an image of a woman deciding the fate of millions.
His Georgie had forsworn marriage after her Ramsgate disaster, while this woman must have wed an earl. She was arrayed in ermine, with a silver tiara holding her elaborate blonde coiffure. Then her stormy blue-gray eyes caught him in their web and beckoned him closer. Darcy examined the strawberry leaves and pearl-adorned circlet on her brow. The missing velvet padding had fooled him! This was no tiara but rather a coronet! His suspicions were confirmed, and an anachronism in the timeline was created when he closed to read the plate’s inscription.
Georgiana Cecil-Darcy, Fourth Countess of Pemberley
1902-
A union with the Cecils was a surprising coup. The nation’s second family traveled in an atmosphere so rarified that Salisbury’s heir, the Earl of Burghley, never condescended to see Darcy even though they frequently crossed paths at White’s and Gentleman Jackson’s. This Georgiana had allied herself with the Cecils, but her new husband put his name in a subordinate position, implicitly recognizing her as the family’s standard-bearer. That meant the Cecils bound themselves to the Darcys. That would be a mystery he would dearly love to untangle.[ii]
Conversation’s soft hum broke his concentration. Bennet dismissed the footman before turning to make his way along the corridor. An upraised hand kept Darcy before the portrait.
Elizabeth’s father acknowledged Darcy and stood behind his shoulder. “I see you have discovered another of the Wardrobe’s remarkable anomalies. You are arrested by one of a dozen I have seen since I arrived just before dinner. From what Edward has told me, you have been here for a week. How many baskets of those delicious Easter Eggs has it been your pleasure to encounter, I wonder?”[iii]
Darcy, disequilibrated, jerkily replied. “This painting is undoubtedly that. This could be my Georgie, except I can read the nameplate. Yes, it is a Georgiana…but she wears ermine and silk with a tiara that is not a countess’s but an earl’s coronet.
Bennet helped. “Indeed, son, our granddaughter—mine one more generation further along than yours—must have sat for this when she came into her title this past spring. She’d have been seventeen-odd, but thanks to the wretched war that killed both her brothers and broke her father’s heart, the unentailed earldom fell to her. The King likely granted an early investiture. Mr. Lloyd George, despite his sentiments about the upper chamber, would have been loath to leave Pemberley’s seat in the Lords vacant. The government needed every vote.
Bennet sat in a pew across from the painting. “Knowing how you protected your Miss Darcy from predatory men, the idea that she married so young must be surprising.”
Darcy snorted and looked at the man he had called father. “To say that the thought had not crossed my mind would be dissembling of the worst sort. I am surprised that a young woman new to the aristocracy would have chosen almost immediately to marry.”
Bennet smiled sadly. “She had watched a generation of British men vanish in just four years. Countess Pemberley did not need to wait and wed after an acceptable time. Her entire age cohort felt love was more important than form. Love was the antidote.
“Just as you found your Elizabeth, this Georgiana found her David. He was a delightful man. Four years of blood and death saw that pair and thousands of others standing up before priest or rabbi.”
Bennet seemed to drift off momentarily as a memory assailed him. “This painting shows my Georgiana, although much younger than I ever knew her.” Bennet suddenly stopped, swallowed audibly, and shook his head. “The Old One refuses to allow other words about her where/when to pass my lips.
“I will try a different tack.
“You must have twigged other differences between the sweet and talented young woman I met at your wedding and this lady. Did you see the one that makes the countess unique beyond words?
“Look at, not just see, the portrait, son.”
Darcy gazed at the great expanse. He stepped back and considered the painting from head to toe. Discarding scene dressing and flowing robes, he bored into the center. “Her eyes…she has Elizabeth’s eyes, although not chocolate brown but North Sea gray.”
“We call them Bennet Eyes, Darcy. Think on your sisters, children, Edward, and me: the unusual cast about our eyes marks us as Children of the Wardrobe.”
Darcy caught his meaning and focused again on the upper reaches of the painting. “Her eyes. This Georgiana, Countess of Pemberley, has Bennet Eyes. Is she someone important to you?”
“No, son, not me, but to others, perhaps later.
[i] Winston Churchill referred to his bouts of depression as “the black dog.”
[ii] Georgiana Cecil-Darcy features in both the fourth volume of the Bennet Wardrobe Series, Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess and the eighth volume, The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy. The Cecils appeared in Of Fortune’s Reversal.
[iii] An anachronistic (like ridiculously modern) double entendre, I know, but it fits and is fun since we are fiddling around the timeline.
So, I come from a time when we layed out our military newspapers and magazines page by page with a storyboard, and having learned much from Martin's detailed series planning as outlined in "Winning the Game of Thrones", I can only imagine the intricately detailed character mapping that this series requires. As a retired strategic planner, it is to me an exquisite art form. Thank you
Awesome post! Loved the exverpt!