Introducing Mrs. Collins
Dear Mr Bennet,
I could not settle until writing to thank you most humbly for your hospitality in these past weeks.
So much has happened in a very short time that I would think it had been a year!
(Had I not the dates written down in front of me, which I have.) In fact, as I left, I overheard your youngest daughter remarking that it felt like a year since I had arrived!
That shows how in accord I have been with your family.
Your kindness in permitting me to stay and in allowing me to partake in a variety of social occasions with you and your daughters shows a great generosity of spirit.
While I admit that there were advantages for you in having a man of my position join you in such company, I assure you that it was I who felt fortunate, even more than you may have.
As for myself, I am delighted to tell you that I have recently found the very greatest felicity – and only a mile from your own door!
I am engaged to Miss Lucas of Lucas Lodge.
She has made me the happiest of men, and I hope that she will name the day as soon as possible.
We shall be married from Meryton, and it is my wish, as well as hers, that you and your family might attend.
I must touch briefly on the subject of the entail.
I will not be ponderous. There is no reason for me to be explicit about something that is already well known – that being the fact that, upon your death, I shall inherit the estate of Longbourn in its entirety, and your wife and daughters will be left with nothing, perhaps destitute.
I have no wish to speak of it. And yet I must, only to explain that my sole purpose in proposing marriage to one of your daughters was in kindness and selfless Christian charity – an attempt to rescue them from the future that was before them.
I now believe that Elizabeth did me a great service by refusing me.
She saw very well that I was making too large a sacrifice in asking for her hand.
I hope that, in the future, she may receive a proposal from a more willing gentleman – as distant a hope as that may seem to you and certainly does to me.
However, I hope that your wife and your daughters will feel compensated for their future loss in the knowledge that their home will now fall to such a dear family friend as Miss Lucas.
It must give your wife great comfort to know that such an intimate acquaintance, who has known the house so well for many years – and is, after all, local – will have the honour of being its mistress.
That thought – of your comfort – guided me in my choice of wife, and be assured I mentioned it in my proposal to her.
I need not tell you, sir, how happy my current circumstance makes me.
You married for love, one presumes, and so you must know how much joy springs forth from such a union.
You have only known Miss Lucas as a life-long friend of your daughter, whereas I, in a week, have the measure of her completely.
She is the perfect match for me: her temperament is calm, her voice is melodic, and her words are easy to understand.
I have found myself a diamond in the rough of Hertfordshire.
I am grateful indeed to you for the invitation of a further visit, and I will gladly oblige.
I will return in a fortnight to stay at Longbourn.
I will spend the chief of my days at Lucas Lodge, becoming better acquainted with my excellent new relations, but I will happily honour the Bennet family with my company in the early mornings.
Until then, I wish you and your family every happiness that can justly be afforded to them.
Your humble servant,
William Collins