Chapter Text
The British East India company first began to trade and formed establishments in Hindoostan. This company is supported by the British government, the power of whose arms has extended her empire over a considerable portion of Hindoostan. On the Ganges, the British possess Bengal, Bahar, and Benares, comprehending a territory of 550 miles in length, by 300 in breadth. They possess several other parts of Hindoostan, all which are supposed to contain 14 millions of inhabitants.
— Elements of Useful Knowledge; 1812
When an Englishman desires activity, inactivity, change, stasis, simplicity, intricacy, strangeness, familiarity, or the pleasure of having his own way, he will look—very naturally—to India. However little calculated that land, in itself, may be to fulfill these caprices, its ideal is so fixed in his mind, that he is sure to find something within the stores of its ancient civilisation to answer to his notions.
Such was the case with Mr. Edward Bennet. The second son of a minor country squire, he was faced, at his majority, with the necessity of fixing upon some course, which would enable him to make his own way in the world. From a scholarly bent, which gave him a good deal of inborn curiosity; and because the idleness of habits, which he had heard to be common in the East, attracted him more than the manly rigour required for the practice of the legal or ecclesiastical professions in England; from these reasons, and perhaps still others, he left a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy, and the only true revelation, for one burdened with superstition and gross idolatry: he joined, in short, in the service of the East India Company at Bombay, soon after it was ceded to the English. Once his innate indolence had overcome the exigencies of the journey thither, it was not often further disturbed by any requirements of his post. His work as a writer for the Company kept him largely within its settlements in the western part of the state of Hindoostan; on the rare occasions when he left Bombay, it was only for Chaul or Bassein.
Mr. Edward Bennet had always intended to marry upon returning to his native England, when his contributions of learning to the Company would have earned him an independence. He was yet in India, however, when he was nearing forty; he grew increasingly susceptible to beauty, and ripe for picking; he was caught at last by a girl with gentle manners, a generous dowry, and remarkable beauty (so far as we can reconcile beauty with the olive complexion). She was the daughter of a Mahomedan merchant and moneylender, who had much to do with the India Company, and was very pleased to furnish one of its votaries with this his most precious good.
Just when Mr. Edward Bennet began to think of shipping himself and his newly acquired ware back to the place of his birth, he received word that his elder brother had died. His father, moreover, had predeceased his brother by some years. He became, therefore, Mr. Bennet, and had the charge of an estate of moderate size in Hertfordshire, for the management of which his education had in no way fitted him—and thus began his years of otium cum dignitate.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
“And now I suppose, that there is no escaping your telling me.”
Mrs. Bennet appeared not to notice his sarcasm. “Well, but let it is: by a single gentleman of large fortune, from the north. Mrs. Long had it from Mr. Morris, and then of course she told me directly. He will take possession even before Michaelmas. What a fine thing for our girls!”
“How so? how can it affect them?”
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them. Therefore you must visit him as soon as ever he comes.”
“I am not sure that I must do any such thing. If this gentleman from the north be so easy in his nature, and so good-humoured, as to consent to take one of our daughters off of our hands, he must also be easy enough not to object to being called on by them. I will send by them a few lines to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chuses—though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”
“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others—and she is so shockingly dark and coarse, besides, that it would be a trial to get her married even in India. She is not half so handsome as Jane—who you know is remarkably fair even for a half-caste—nor is she near so lively as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”
“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he: “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”
“Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way?”
If this statement revealed a certain imperviousness to irony, it must be forgiven: Mrs. Bennet’s advantages were not those of the mind. Her education in India had done nothing to fit her to be a rational companion to an Englishman, Mahomedan men generally preferring to keep their women in a state of ignorance. It had become evident to Mr. Bennet soon after their alighting in Hastings, that the shyness of manner, which his bride had evidenced in Bombay, was due entirely to the dictatorial restraint imposed upon her by her father: that she was unused to enjoying the liberty, which Englishwomen claimed as their happy portion, and very unlikely to make good use of it.
Had she been reared from childhood in the healthier climate, and amongst the more wholesome doctrines, of England, he was sure that she would have been a sensible, sober, and industrious woman. As it was, either the stringent tyranny, or the abandoned voluptuousness, or some other facet, of the Mahomedan religion, had vitiated her intellect. Her temper was no less uncertain than her understanding. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The sole business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news.