Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Life settled down after this incident into something more closely approaching a routine.
Georgiana’s masters came to the house regularly, and after a few weeks, both the Mrs Darcys joined in the lessons—the elder having never learned French and the younger wishing to learn to draw so that she might send her husband the sort of delightful sketches he had sent to her.
It turned out not to be nearly as easy as she had hoped.
Mary came to stay for a month, and at Georgiana’s request, her music master listened to her play.
Elizabeth would probably have prevented this had she known in advance, for Mr Haskins was an irascible gentleman.
However, while he shook his head and tutted, he also suggested some simple improvements in technique and posture, which made a tremendous difference to Mary’s playing.
Elizabeth was touched to see how grateful Mary was for even a little attention and consideration, and since Georgiana and she soon became friends, she suggested that Mary share with Georgiana rather than herself.
That night she could hear the two girls whispering and giggling together and wondered whether either of them had ever done that before.
Marooned between Elizabeth and Jane on the one hand and Kitty and Lydia on the other, Mary had often been left out and, as Elizabeth wrote to her husband,
I am ashamed of how little consideration I have extended to my poor sister. She is not naturally clever or talented, and in trying to be both, she has made a variety of wrong tacks that Jane and I must endeavour to amend. Is that correct? Tacks?
When it was time for Mary to go home, Mrs Bennet and her remaining daughters came to collect her, bearing letters from Mr Bennet for Elizabeth to read.
From the first letter:
The seas were beyond anything I saw when I went to Ireland, even the sailors thought it uncommon rough.
I truly thought my cot would be my coffin.
However, my son-in-law was very attentive and did everything he could for my comfort.
I am fairly certain the Physician to the Fleet thought tending to mere civilians an imposition, but Captain Darcy was not to be gainsaid.
Pray tell Lizzy that she has an excellent gentleman for a husband, although I dare say she knows it already.
The second letter was headed The Crown and Anchor, Valletta, Malta.
After a few paragraphs of description of an absurdly English inn in the middle of a Mediterranean town and of reassurances about his health, the cough almost gone and the ability to breathe deeply I had thought lost forever, regained, he again talked of the captain:
Seeing him at his work, I realised what a considerable man he is.
The crew he has been given is raw and discontented, the old hands resenting the arrival of the new, and the new confused about their business.
However, he has so mixed their duties and their mutual obligations that when he instituted a series of competitions in the various motions that make up their daily activities, such as striking and hoisting the many masts and sails, they were obliged to cooperate and teach the unhandy so as not to lose the match.
The prizes are trifling—a bottle of wine, extra duff (a sort of solid pudding), release from punishment—but the good-humoured rivalry is beginning to make an appreciable difference in the feeling amongst the crew.
The officers of the ship have told me of the many cruel and tyrannical captains that abound, men who would enforce obedience with the lash, seeing no other way to control so various a group of men, many of them deeply reluctant to serve, and it is true that I have seen the ‘grating rigged’ for punishment more than once.
However, in view of the number of thieves and worse that were included in the latest draft, I am convinced that, on each occasion, it was an absolute necessity and have already noticed that the number of such occasions is sensibly diminishing as time passes.
He sails on his mission—which he refuses to discuss—next week, and I shall miss his company, even though I am very comfortably situated here.
Please send Plotinus, The Eudemian Ethics, and The Rape of the Lock.
While Elizabeth could have done with more of such information, she could not help but note that her father was quite obviously feeling a great deal better, and she settled down to wait for the next letter from her husband with considerable anticipation.
As she waited, she recruited the small boys of the town as her spies.
Every stranger who entered the little town was followed by half a dozen children until he would leave again.
The knives-to-grind man had never before worked with an apparently admiring crowd about him and was by no means sure he liked it.
The journeyman joiner on the tramp was followed from one end of the town to the other and was glad to leave, although his journey was entirely innocent and his character mild.
The potboys at the King’s Head and the Eagle and Child and the boy who worked for Mrs Cope at the little alehouse all reported to Puttnam and received their extra few pennies for doing so.
The system was inexpensive and efficient, and Elizabeth was secretly rather proud of it.
After a number of increasingly anxious weeks of waiting, two letters arrived from Captain Darcy at once. Lieutenant Grace explained that the ship carrying the first was delayed at sea by an action with a French privateer, which it had chased to Madeira before boarding.
She was feeding the hens when Lieutenant Grace stumped over with the letters and a parcel from her husband.
Hurriedly wiping her hands on her apron, she rushed indoors to receive him, scarcely remembering to be civil.
Luckily, he seemed to understand, for he soon excused himself and left.
Georgiana was at the rectory, learning to dance with the vicar’s daughters and some other girls from the town, so she had the letters to herself.
They were numbered ‘Two’ and ‘Three’, so she opened them in order, glad she had remembered to number her own. The first began, Dear Madam, and her heart sank.
He began by assuring her of her father’s continued improvement.
I have settled him in the Crown and Anchor, a respectable, quiet place where English is spoken but where he can get the dishes of the region if he so desires.
I always think it a shame to visit a place and insist on eating ‘the roast beef of old England’ and, unlike many of my shipmates, he seems to have no rooted objection to garlic, an herb of the region much used in cookery.
He has two rooms and one for Jessup, and he has set his books and papers out quite comfortably.
Yesterday, I called to see him and found him sitting outside under an awning, drinking chocolate and watching the life of the port.
His breathing is still rather shallower than seems to me quite right, but he can climb the stairs to his room without aid and is taking language lessons from a local schoolmaster.
There was another charming drawing of her father, in loose trousers and a light jacket over an open-necked shirt, sitting at a table, looking about him, a broad-brimmed hat on the table beside him.
This letter, like her own, was in the form of a journal and it was obvious when her letter arrived, for he broke off a description of a festival in the town for some saint’s day or other.
My Dear Elizabeth, your letter arrived his morning on the Endymion and was more welcome than you can probably believe.
For a moment, she read no further, a strange feeling in her chest, a sort of hollowness that was still oddly happy. She shook herself and read on:
Not since my mother died have I received a letter so full of home.
It was as though you were sitting beside me telling me of your day.
I could almost see Anderssen and Grace mending the roof as though it was the foretopmast yard in a heavy swell.
If Grace, bless him, has a fault, it is that he does tend to make a fuss when there is anything to be done.
I know you will not say anything to him, for he was monstrous kind to me when I was a master’s mate, growing out of my uniform and constantly hungry.
It was not until many months after I left the Lincoln that I realised that he could not possibly have been sent too much food from home, I was too glad to get the pots of jam he gave me.
You ask why I was sent to sea so very young.
It was, I suppose, a mistake. My father was the county MP, and another member, Mr Gallgrave, mentioned he was sending a lad to sea and did my father want to send his youngest along with him?
I found out later that Mr Gallgrave thought I was rather older than I was, as I was somewhat tall for my age.
You must not distress yourself, however.
While nine is young, it is by no means unheard of—lads of that age are rated ‘Captain’s Servant’ and it is something like an apprenticeship.
One learns one’s trade by watching and gradually doing more and more as time goes on.
Then, when one is twelve or thirteen, one is rated midshipman and given some little authority.
I was luckier than most. The Illustrious was a well-run, happy ship, I had a regular allowance of fifty pounds a year sent out, so I was not entirely reliant on ship’s stores, and my uncle Matlock, my mother’s brother, was very kind and sent regular presents.
So all in all, it could have been a lot worse, especially since I found the mathematics of navigation interesting and, if not easy, then at least possible to be learned, unlike one poor fellow who could never get his brains round it and had to be sent home.
Now, that is a tale from my childhood. You can tell me what your father meant by ‘never out of a tree’.