Chapter 2
Longbourn
“Do you remember Mary?” asked Mama, as we sat in the parlour. I myself had no memory of her, being too young—just eighteen months old. Jane, a year older, nodded, but she was uncertain.
“Perhaps, Mama,” she whispered, “but I never saw her.”
“Forgive me, for such things are not often talked about, if talked about at all. We hide our sorrows, even from other women.”
She looked at us, but her eyes were focused elsewhere—likely recalling that day some fourteen years before.
“It was an easy birth, just as yours were,” she continued.
“No more than six hours from when the waters broke to when the babe slid into the midwife’s hands.
I was sitting at the end of the bed, Thomas—Mr. Bennet—supporting my back as he had done for you both.
He was such an excellent, caring man. I remember the silence, waiting for the first cry, perhaps just a gurgle to come from the child.
Mary was as perfect as a newborn can be, except there was a tight knot in her umbilical cord. ” Tears moistened Mama’s eyes.
“You have seen lambs and calves born in the paddocks,” she said, “attached to the afterbirth by a cord—it is the cord that gives them life, that feeds them as they grow in the womb.”
Jane and I had both spent time in the lambing fold, cleaning a weak lamb’s mouth, squirting milk from its mother’s bag into its mouth, taking a lamb which had been cast by its mother and putting it to another ewe.
“Mama, we were the only girls of our neighbours who went to the fields—why did you insist we join the husbandmen and their wives and children? Why were our experiences so different from the upbringing of other gentlewomen?”
“So you would learn, Jane, how babes grow, how they enter the world. So you would be spared some of the grief I suffered. Oh, I knew women died from puerperal fever, that babes often died in infancy—that was the way of the world. But I was bewildered that a babe could grow in my womb, that it could quicken, that the birth would occur with all its pain, but without any living baby at the end. Such could not be! Little Mary, she was no different from you, Lizzy, with a swirl of soft downy hair.”
I took my mother’s hands. She was twisting them, unable to keep them still.
“The midwife did not tell me that Mary would be warm—the warmth of my own body. Deep inside my heart, I felt she was still alive. Thomas took her from me; he kissed her tiny brow, his own tears running down his cheeks. ‘We shall call her Mary, as we agreed. She shall lie next to my mother, her namesake; and in heaven she will find succour and comfort.’ He took the tiny child away, and it was only then that I realised I would never see her again. That was the beginning of such grief as I had never known, that she was no longer a physical part of me and I wouldn’t feel her growing within me nor put her to my breast.”
Mama called for tea, then poured for each of us. I thought of my little sister Mary, whose name Jane and I had read on the stone in the cemetery: Mary Eleanor Bennet—held for a moment, loved for a lifetime. As Papa had said, she lay next to his mother. A little soul who had never drawn a breath.
“If only that were the end of it,” Mama continued.
“Time offered great consolation. The sharpness of my grief dulled to a steady ache, and I began again to hope. When, a year later, I found myself once more with child, my heart dared to flutter with cautious joy. For truly, my dears, to bring a child into the world gives such joy. First, when I held you, Jane, in my arms, put you to my breast—but so quiet, so serene, as you are now. Then Elizabeth, always squirming, arching your back—but I could never love you less.”
She sipped her tea, once again her eyes focused on the past.
“I felt the quickening. Thomas was overjoyed. The midwife came, felt my womb as little Catherine—Kitty as we called her even then—grew apace. Of course, we did not know whether the babe was a boy or a girl, but calling her Kitty seemed to be a way of being close to the child. I had often placed Mr. Bennet’s hand on my belly, so he could feel Kitty move inside.
At night, he would lie with his arms about me, feeling that little life grow. Oh, such a wonderful time.”
Mama paused, and once again tears welled in her eyes. She looked confused, trying to focus, but her feelings overwhelmed her. Jane took her in a firm embrace. How does one comfort the woman who had always been so strong, who had always been there to soothe bruised knees and scraped palms?
“Oh, dear, I have become a watering-pot.” She laughed, but it held no mirth, only hidden pain.
“One night, your father was stroking my rounded womb when he became very still—
‘What is it?’ I cried, for it was clear he was greatly concerned.
‘Fanny, I cannot feel the babe move. Can it be asleep?’
“I felt a sudden fear. Indeed, that afternoon I had not felt any movement. That night was the worst of my life. In the morning, the midwife came, and held her listening horn to my belly—she could hear nothing. I couldn’t breathe.
Neither I nor Thomas could speak. Surely, Kitty was still growing, that she would be born and I could hold her to my breast as I had done with both of you. ”
“Oh, Mama,” I cried. “Surely not! Surely Kitty was alive and well.” But, of course, she was not. For Jane and I had seen the stone next to Mary’s: Catherine Annie Bennet—she will live forever in our hearts.
“I do not know, to this day, which is the greatest sorrow: whether giving birth to a child whom you knew was alive until it entered the birth canal—such was Mary, whose movement in the womb caused the cord to knot—or enduring the pain of giving birth to a child already dead.
“Your Aunt Philips attended me, for your father was beside himself with grief and found he did not have the heart to provide the comfort he knew I needed. He was not a cowardly man, only overcome. Hattie wrapped the babe in a soft linen cloth and handed her to me. Kitty was absolutely minute. Her eyes still sealed shut and she had no hair. She was clearly meant to remain in my womb, growing to become another of my beautiful daughters. In truth, I had not believed that she was dead until I held her tiny body in my hands.”
The room was silent, broken only by the faint ticking of the mantel clock.
Jane’s lips trembled, her eyes shining with tears.
As for myself, I sat almost motionless, hands clasped tightly in my lap.
My breath came shallow, chest tight with a sorrow I had never truly imagined until now.
The stories of Mary and Kitty were no longer names chiselled on stone in the cemetery, but sisters—real, tangible, gone from us before we could know them.
I ached for Mama, for Papa too, and for Jane, who remembered more than I did.
We both remembered Lydia, that lovely baby girl whom we carried around the house as though she were our own special doll.
We imagined her grown up like us, though I was only five and Jane six years old.
She would love ribbons and bonnets; we would run together through the woods, and sneak apples from Mr. Goulding’s orchard.
But the world is not always kind to such hopes.
A fever swept through the village that winter, and little Lydia, so newly arrived, succumbed, as did so many children in the town.
She died in the night, her tiny fingers curled around Mama’s until the last. Mr. Jones, the apothecary, could offer no explanation, no remedy, only the hollow comfort of sympathy.
By morning, the cradle was empty—Papa added yet another stone beside those of Mary and Kitty: Lydia Amelia Bennet—born in hope, a life deeply loved.
“Lizzy, I have grieved far too long.” Mama stood, taking my hands. “We shall always remember Mary, Kitty and Lydia, but it is truly time to let them be.”
There was little I could say. Jane and I often visited Longbourn cemetery, laying flowers on our grandparents’ graves—Grandfather and Grandmother Bennet, Grandfather and Grandmother Gardiner—and on the graves of our sisters.
I would continue to do so, but not pretend—as I had done in the breakfast room—that they lived in the house, taking breakfast, nuncheon, or tea.
I thought of Mary, who was the most serious of us, reading sermons and philosophy, but skilled at the piano-forte—she always practised whereas I would rather walk in the woods.
Of Kitty, who loved to draw, and how she and I, would often climb Oakham Mount and sketch the hills and church towers of Hertfordshire spread before us.
And Lydia—bold, brash Lydia—who loved ribbons and remaking bonnets.
They would always live in my heart but no longer in the nursery, the parlour, or the breakfast room.
* * *
The next day, I visited Aunt Philips, my mother’s sister, Hattie. She was a kind-hearted woman, prone to gossip, but extremely loyal to her family. She and Uncle Philips had never had children, so Jane and I were surrogate daughters to her.
“Lizzy, what a pleasant surprise! Come in, come in. You must see the wallpaper pattern book that Mrs. Hubbard has lent me. Perhaps you could help me choose—even Mr. Philips agrees that the walls in the parlour are faded and need redecorating.”
We sat to tea and began leafing through the book of patterns.
“What do you prefer, Aunt?” I asked. There were so many different styles to choose from: block-prints emulating fancy textiles, embossed leathers and tapestries, moiré patterns mimicking the shimmer of silk, Gothic motifs with elaborate quatrefoils, and repeated floral and botanical motifs.
“Oh, Lizzy, I cannot say. But I prefer something light, for the room is a little dark, with only the window overlooking the street letting light in during the day.”
“Then I suggest you choose a floral pattern—pastels or something stronger?”