Page 14 of A Quiet Affection

Elizabeth sobbed, begged, and barely kept herself from a desperate childish rage upon receiving this refusal to let her reread the novel.

A partial reason that Elizabeth did not descend into a complete tantrum was that Mr. Darcy’s manner promised that he would not indulge her nor be amused by her antics in the way that Papa would have.

Elizabeth desperately missed Papa—but she refused to think about him. It hurt too much.

But also, of greater importance, was the presence of Fitzwilliam. Over the course of the days on the road Elizabeth had become determined to act in a manner that would let him think well of her. There was something inside of Elizabeth that simply refusedto behave in a particularly shameful manner in front of him once more.

Elizabeth was left to long for the day—a day that was many years distant—when she would be independent, able to hire her own servant, acquire her own copy ofTom Jones,and order the servant to read it to her. She correctly assumed, without asking, thatTristram Shandywas also lost to her, since it began with a passage that even more bluntly referred to matters that gentle girls should know nothing about.

After Elizabeth gave up attempting to convince him to let her read more widely, Mr. Darcy sent her off, after sternly reminding Elizabeth that she was to be a burden and dependent upon her sister all of her days, and that how she behaved would reflect uponJaneeven more than upon herself, and that she must do better.

Elizabeth stiffly smiled at that consideration, nodded, and promised that she would never become a difficulty for Jane.

For his part Mr. Darcy was satisfied that Elizabeth was tolerably obedient and not possessed of an overly fierce spirit.

Inthat, he wholly misunderstood his ward.

In Mr. Darcy’s considered opinion, women ought to be yielding and chiefly passive. Ornaments to the house. They should not be sharp, incisive, or demanding. His own deceased wife, of course, had been his model of what a woman should be, and Mrs. Wickham his model of what a woman should not be. That a woman could be forceful, vivid, and questing for interest and adventure, and yet virtuous, trustworthy and kind did not occur to him.

I shall now mention an additional point about Mr. Darcy’s guardianship that speaks to his goodness and his character. Though it would have been his right to use the income from Janeand Elizabeth’s small fortunes to defray the additional costs he incurred for their boarding, education, and clothing—the style of life and education he provided for them cost somewhat more than what their income could have supported in a time when prices had lately risen fast and the income from the consols that Mrs. Bennet’s father had placed his savings into had not risen at all—the notion of doing so never occurred to him.

Instead, the income from their fortunes was annually added to the sum of their capital and had grown to a not insubstantial increase in its value by the time each of the girls left his guardianship.

The course of formal education which Elizabeth was now given was more rigorous and time consuming than anything which occurred under Mr. Bennet’s tutelage, where the natural interest of the girls had governed how they spent their time. Jane had long since become more accomplished than her sisters due to the tutoring that Mr. Darcy arranged for her during the months of each year that she stayed with him.

Despite this, Jane had always been keenly aware that Elizabeth surpassed her in any subject in which she took a particular interest. This was proven thoroughly now that Elizabeth was forced to study all subjects which did not require sight.

Elizabeth was drilled until she had memorized the names and principal deeds of every single King and Queen of England, and not just those involved in the most romantic episodes of the War of the Roses along with Richard the Lionheart. She now memorized the name of each type of metal, the Roman emperors (she had long since forgotten most of them from the one time she memorized the whole list to prove that she could when Jane returned from a visit to Mr. Darcy bragging of the ability), the names of all of the chief countries in the world, with their capitalcities, and the names of and relative locations of all of the county seats in England.

She was required to be able to name on the big globe in the library all of the land features that had been raised up so they could be felt, and to know how far to move her hand to point out Asia Minor if her hand was placed on any location in Europe. In combination with Elizabeth’s continuing fascination for the dissected map that Mr. Gardiner had given her while she was still in convalescence, Miss Wilson considered her after six months to have a sufficient knowledge of geography to serve the needs of a blind woman.

For languages Elizabeth’s excellent French, full knowledge of the Greek alphabet, and acquaintance with the thousand or so most common words in both Latin and archaic Greek, was supplemented with Miss Wilson’s accented Italian and nearly perfect German.

Proper attention to sewing and embroidery was given, and a respectable woman of some years from the village who had been blind from birth was brought in to explain to Elizabeth the various tricks that might be used by the blind to create fine images on pillows, to produce complicated patterns by feel, and to stitch together pieces for any purpose.

This woman was the first blind person whom Elizabeth had an opportunity to speak to at any length after her injuries, and she gave Elizabeth varied and diverse tricks of use for leading an active life as a blind woman. Some of these—such as how to tell from their voice and manner if someone meant to rob you when returning change—were of less use to Elizabeth than others, such as how to use the echoes from making a clicking noise with her mouth to determine whether the space in front of her was empty or had a wall or fence.

For those readers who are hoping for—or merely expecting—a melodramatic tale of a mistreated blind orphan struggling against the unjust treatment of those who ought to have had her best interests at heart, I must disappoint you by confessing that Elizabeth enjoyed being forced to study. She was truly and suitably grateful to Mr. Darcy for having put such thought into what was necessary for her education, and she even had therarethought that she wished that her own education as a child had been superintended by a governess, so that she would not feel so ignorant now.

Like nearly every school child, Elizabeth mourned the paucity of time which she could dedicate purely to her own interests, and to games, daydreaming, and trifling stories. But Elizabeth thrived under this tutelage.

The fact was that Elizabeth was not at all ignorant: She knew a great deal about matters that Miss Wilson considered as having no importance at all, such as the rudiments of calculus, the ability to recognize all of the letters in Greek, and a detailed memory of every single story that William Cunnington had told her father about the barrows that he’d dug up over the past few years, when Mr. Bennet had been one of the gentlemen he’d canvassed for contributions to fund his work.

Before he returned to his university, Fitzwilliam Darcy maintained a strong interest in the welfare of the unfortunate orphan. He saw that Elizabeth was frightened and uncomfortable in what must seem to her to be an overly large house, and that she felt as though she had very little control over matters. He thought that lack of control the principal reason that she had become so upset aboutTom Jones.

Lizzy was denied something that she liked and wanted for a reason thatshecould not respect. She must think it was unfairand stupid, and Lizzy particularly despised anything that was either.

Despite his immense respect for his father, Darcy did not approve of disappointing the poor child in this matter. Girls ingeneral, Fitzwilliam agreed,should not be permitted to read such shocking books, but he was of the opinion that Lizzy did not belong in the category of ‘girls in general’. The education that she had already received from her father had been so eccentric that it would be impossible to turn her into an ordinary young miss at this late date, and that was without even accounting for the way that such a thing would be pointless with Elizabeth’s infirmities.

It was an odd experience for Darcy to think that his father was mistaken about something that he considered as being of importance, and uncomfortable. Darcy had enough respect for his father that he acknowledged the possibility that his father was right; after all, Papa was wiser than him. But Darcy had a superior knowledge of Elizabeth and her character.

Darcy also saw, without understanding why, that Elizabeth did not wish to spend much time with her sister or with Wickham. He therefore made a regular practice of spending a great deal of time keeping her company.

Her connection to Mr. Bennet, who Darcy had held in the highest respect, and the way that she had a manner similar to his, led Darcy to freely muse about matters philosophical and impractical in her company. In a way, he talked to her about the things that he ordinarily directed to Mr. Bennet in a letter.

For her part Elizabeth loved to listen to him talking about the arguments between philosophers that he was reading about, even when she did not understand the point that Fitzwilliam meant to make. He was always patient when she asked him to explain every small particular twice. She felt the joy that she hadin conversations with her father again—not thatFitzwilliamwas like father. No, not at all. Not in the slightest. Fitzwilliam wasFitzwilliam. But rather it was as though Papa was very much present, watching their argument, and prepared to intervene in it with a pointed question posed in the Socratic manner if they started to spout foolishness to each other.

The day Fitzwilliam left she cried as soon as she had sufficient privacy to do so—Elizabeth had too much pride to do it while they were still shaking hands, saying their parting words, or while Mr. Darcy, George Wickham, and worst of allJanewatched.