Write No Evil （Epistolary） #5
On the other hand, she has become exceptionally good at ferreting out the basic goodness and reliability of people, and she can detect dishonesty.
I have come to believe that practised liars like Mr Wickham are too reliant on a look of goodness, honesty, and integrity; but those have no effect on Lizzy.
She hears their tone of voice, compares what they say in logical terms to it, and she has honed a way to tell the good from the bad.
It is more useful than you might imagine, and I believe in a trade she might do quite well.
Imagine how well a businessman could do if he had a better idea of the truth or falsehood of a business proposition than he could obtain himself.
I can well imagine you might even find it useful.
In our case, she is not made for idleness; so as soon as we arrived in Brighton, she stumbled almost by accident on our favourite pastime.
She has a prodigious memory and can remember most of the books she read before she lost her sight.
She can also remember a book if Mr Hopkinson or one of the footmen reads it to her.
I have tried to read to her as well, but the effort is too taxing to sustain for long, whereas Hopkinson thinks nothing of reading for many hours.
He is really the dearest man, as you well know.
One Sunday afternoon, Lizzy sat with me in a park in the city centre when I was feeling poorly, and she offered to read to me.
Thinking me melancholy, she recited the comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
As she spoke in her clear and enticing voice, we gathered an audience of children.
We were in a not particularly prosperous part of the city because I wanted to see what it was like.
Do not worry, we were surrounded by our retainers and were perfectly safe.
By the end of the recitation, we had a good two dozen listeners hanging on every word in rapt attention.
We repeated the experiment and always had the same result.
Then Lizzy selected one of the poor children who had not been sent to work yet, but was likely to be soon.
She asked the girl if she would like to learn some letters, and much to her delight, between Lizzy and Mr Hopkinson she soon had a small gaggle of children learning to read.
We continued this exercise for some weeks, eventually deciding to hire a small schoolhouse to teach them in.
We then added a few more students, and naturally needed to hire a real teacher.
To be brief, Lizzy wanted to use her stipend to fund the school after we were gone, and I naturally took care of that from my own allowance, which we barely touch with our simple way of living.
We hired a man Lizzy believes is honest as our man of business to oversee the affair, a schoolmistress to instruct, and another man to take care of the building and grounds. We left a fully working school with sufficient funds to operate for several years—five at least.
I must tell you, Mother, that I was so insufferably proud of the pair of us that we did the same thing again in Boston, and again and again.
We have done our best to ensure they can survive after we leave, at least for a few years.
Neither of us believe we materially changed the world.
The poor are like the tides and we can no more affect the ebb and flow than we can for the sea we both love so much; but for a few boys and girls, we might allow a child to go to a maid’s position instead of a workhouse; or perhaps become an upstairs maid or shop clerk or shopkeeper’s wife instead of a scullery maid.
Our ambitions are small, but we are confident that we will achieve them in some measure, so we are content.
Mother, who would have thought the daughter of Lady Catherine de Bourgh would be so insufferably proud over such a small thing? But I am, and I have you to thank for the fortune and freedom to do my part for the world. I am quite certain Lizzy feels the same.
Now that I have finished my shameless bragging, it is time to turn to another topic before I become as intolerable as one of my cousins or a strutting rooster—who are indistinguishable, as far as I can tell.
The first news is that Lizzy and I judge it time to come home, and we set sail in a fortnight.
Relations have been strained between America and England for the past four years, but none seem to have held it against two whom they consider more or less orphaned English girls.
Now that Congress declared war a fortnight ago, much to everyone’s shock and surprise, we are convinced we must leave.
In truth, we were ready to leave anyway, and I look forward to being home and in your company once again.
As you know, we have sailed only with Captain Jamison.
We have made a half-dozen voyages with him and his crew.
Lizzy knows every inch of his ship, every member of the crew by name, and she loves the crow’s nest above all places.
The captain resembles a fussy grandmother and has written us twice urging our return.
He will call for us in a few weeks. Having cargo to deliver enroute, he must make several stops, and we shall see some of the islands on the trip.
The eastbound journey is much faster than our arrival, for the winds favour that direction; we shall have about a month of sailing plus calls at two or three ports for business.
We should be home in September, and I look forward to it.
Your beloved daughter,
Anne