Chapter 2 The Early Life of Mary Bennet
The Early Life of Mary Bennet
Well. So this is how it is to be.
Holzmann, I suppose you did me a favor by never responding to my pleas for help. Your complete silence has taught me a lesson that I ought to have learned long ago: There is no one in the world one can rely on but oneself.
(Does that sound bitter? I do not mean to be bitter.)
The situation is under control for the moment, you will be interested—or not—to know. It took considerable effort, and I daresay the neighbors will never look at me the same again, but it is done.
Whether he will remain docile, or whether our problems are just beginning, I cannot say.
However, I have decided to continue updating you.
Perhaps you really do wish to reply to my letters but cannot for some reason—a long illness, maybe, or you performed that experiment with pure sodium that I advised against and blew your hands off.
And if matters do worsen again, perhaps at the expense of my own life, I believe someone ought to know how this mess came about, even if that someone is handless.
Holzmann, you have been my constant correspondent for many months; when it comes to the technicalities of my process, you already possess most of the particulars.
However, since your own experiments have henceforth been unsuccessful, I suppose I should give you an explanation of how I came to study this subject.
Perhaps a fuller account of the origin of my theories and my development as a woman of science will allow you to reproduce my work at last—or, as seems more likely to be necessary, to destroy my work.
I learned to read before I could talk. I was unusually late to speak, nearly four years old; in our large family no one seems to have been much concerned about this. I imagine it was considered a blessing in our noisy house.
I was approaching my fourth birthday, and unease was at last growing that something might be truly wrong with my head, when a fateful spanking changed matters considerably.
I had read all the books I could find, from my elder sisters’ primers to Mamma’s novels from the circulating library to even the housekeeper’s book of accounts—anything I could get my small hands on.
No one believed I was really reading, of course, since I had never uttered a word, but they let me amuse myself by “pretending” to read.
The trouble came when I ran out of books.
I remember reading the last page of Mrs. Burney’s Evelina and starting to cry—not because I was moved by that ridiculous tale, but because I had read it four times already and sucked all the savor out of it.
I felt that if I could not get some new ones my life would not be worth living.
Unfortunately, the remaining unconsumed books were in my father’s study.
My father’s study was my Shangri-La, my Camelot. It was the one place I was strictly forbidden to go. I was not a disobedient child, but I was also quite convinced in my baby mind that if I did not get something new to read I would die, so I felt I had no choice.
At first I was discreet. I would slip in when no one was looking, grab a volume at random, and secret myself under the credenza.
There I would read a few pages, just enough to take the edge off my thirst, then I would put it back in its place and slip out with no one the wiser.
I even carefully maintained my father’s faults of alphabetization, though they drove me mad.
As time went on and I was not caught, I grew bolder. I read more and more, longer and longer, until one day I became so absorbed in my volume of Dalton that I failed to hear my father come in, and he found me cross-legged on the floor with a volume nearly as large as myself open on my lap.
I can remember the way my heart thumped in terror when I looked up and saw his astonished face, which quickly changed to fury. He grabbed the book, snapping it shut so fast that it pinched my fingers. When he found his voice, he roared, “Mrs. Bennet!”
My mother came fluttering in, still holding the shirt she was sewing. “My dear, what is it—oh! Mary, you naughty girl, what are you doing with that?”
“Mrs. Bennet,” he said, very sarcastically, “it matters little if your idiot daughter plays with your Gothic romances, but these are real books. She must not be allowed to damage them.” And he turned me over his knee and rapidly spanked me thrice.
“I do not care if you s-spank me,” I sobbed as my mother wrenched me free. “O-only let me r-r-read the rest of the p-page. I want to know what Dalton said about the relative weights of carbon and phosphorus.”
At this, both my parents stared at me, dumbfounded. My father let the book of Dalton’s fall from his hands in astonishment; I caught it with a look of reproof.
“Mary,” said my mother, “you can talk?”
“It appears so,” I said. “I never tried before.”
“Good God,” said my father. “Did the child really read all that?”
“Of course I did,” I said, wiping my nose.
“And why not?” my mother demanded, replacing my sleeve with a clean handkerchief. “She is your child, Mr. Bennet. If you are clever enough to read such things, why should not she be? Good heavens, Mary, stop sniffling in that disgusting fashion.”
“Yes,” said my father faintly. “Why not.”
You may imagine that all this created a bond between my father and me, but it did not fall out that way.
Oh, for a time he enjoyed showing me off to his friends; I was even allowed in his library on occasion.
But I soon ran through all the volumes he had, and when I tried to discuss them with him, it became clear that, at least when it came to volumes of natural philosophy, I understood them a great deal better than he did.
Papa fancies himself a gentleman of letters, but really, his library, while broad, is shallow.
His Latin and German are poor, and—pardon the unfilial sentiment—his mathematics execrable.
My father was not jealous that I understood more than he did.
He simply did not believe it. When I began to beg, with increasing urgency, for more books to continue my studies of the natural sciences, he simply decided that I did not understand them, that I had been putting on airs, and that that was quite enough of that.
What is a young natural philosopher to do?
Well, I could only make the best of things.
Mamma, having discovered that shoving an unread book into my hands would keep me quiet for hours at a stretch, borrowed as many as she could from the neighbors.
Few of them had libraries even as fine as Papa’s, though, and I had soon read every book within ten miles that was deemed suitable for a young lady’s eyes (and quite a few that were not).
But the one true ally I had in my quest for more advanced knowledge: my father’s cousin, Rev.
Henry Bennet—known in our household as Harry.
He was rector to our small parish, and his passion for learning made him a staunch friend to both myself and my father.
He even persuaded my father to take me along to an electrical salon.
I can still remember how my heart pounded with excitement as the carriage lurched along toward Harry’s friend’s house. I was bursting with questions about electrical fire, but as my father, who hated leaving home, grew more sarcastic with every bump in the road, I held my tongue.
“Still don’t see why we must bring the child all this way,” my father grumbled. “This sort of exhibition was old in my father’s day.”
Harry winked at me. He was shy and stammering with most adults, but grew steadier when speaking to me or Papa. “Mary was not here in your father’s day,” he pointed out. “Besides, electrical fire still contains many mysteries. Perhaps one of us shall be the next Franklin or Galvani.”
“Hmph,” said Papa, but he looked pleased, and I stopped worrying he would turn the carriage around.
There were perhaps a dozen of us crowded into a small salon.
The electrician, a tired-looking man in a stained cravat, seemed as bored by his own demonstrations as Papa claimed to be, but I was in heaven.
His apparatus consisted mainly of a great glass globe held by a metal frame and attached to a crank, and it required all Mamma’s lessons in etiquette to keep me from rushing forward to get my hands on it.
From the moment he had the servants draw the curtains, leaving us in darkness, I felt a thrill go through me.
There was a soft whirr as he turned his glass globe against the cloth, then we all went ooh (even Papa) as he waved his metal wand, lighting up this artificial night with a shower of sparks.
He showed us all the old standbys—the artificial aurora, arcing blue-green between two poles; using electrical power to turn a book’s pages without touching it.
It was all new to me, and I felt I was nothing but eyes and ears and tongue, existing only to see the sparks, hear the sizzle, taste the strange tang in the air.
He concluded by having us all hold hands in a line.
I took hold of my father on one side. On the other, a small and rather sweaty hand slipped into mine, and I realized in surprise that there was another young girl in attendance.
I had been so busy staring at the electrician’s equipment that I had scarcely noted the other guests.
We exchanged shy smiles, and then the electrician closed the hand of the man at the end of the line around a jar wrapped in some kind of metal foil.
He himself took the hand of the lady at the end, and dipped a metal rod into the jar.
Zzzzap!
A tingle raced through me. A flutter, like nervousness, or excitement, flooded my body starting from the stranger’s hand. There was minor pain, too, shooting through my chest like longing. Her fingers twitched against mine and she gave a soft oh .
The adults were not so poised. “I say!” said Papa, and several ladies screamed and one swooned.
The electrician immediately set about apologizing—it seemed the shock had been rather stronger than he intended.
I turned away, wondering if I could get him to do it again.
It had hurt, but only a little, and what was that next to the thrill of touching the mysteries of creation?
I looked at the girl. The perfect ringlets that had hung around her face were now in some disarray.
Short hairs stood out all around her face, like a sort of electrical halo.
I reached out to touch it without thinking and we gasped as another shock went through us both.
We had neglected to let go of each other’s hands.
Holzmann, I cannot tell you what this first taste of electrical fire did to me.
Mind and body, I felt consumed by it. I felt as if I had a body for the first time, as if the spark had created me instead of merely passing through me.
The sensations I felt—I am a young lady, so I shall mention only my fingertips, a warmth in my cheeks, and a tingle in the tip of my nose, but please believe that every part of me felt—well, it felt .
On the carriage ride home it still shivered over and through me.
My fingers clenched around the remembered sensation of that shock passing from the stranger’s hand into mine, up my arm, and thrilling through my chest until my father carried it away again.
“Admit it, cousin,” Harry teased Papa. “You enjoyed yourself.”
“Yes, well, it’s always a very gaudy display. That young showman, though, what a charlatan. Did you hear him spinning tales to that young lady? Telling her electrical fire could be used to transform one metal to another, or even create living insects from nothing! Preposterous.”
“Yes,” Harry admitted. “Most of it.”
“Most?”
“I know this talk of spontaneous generation is nonsense, but when he called it ‘the spark of life,’ well, we do not really know what electrical fire is, do we?”
“Nonsense.”
“Biblical scholars talk of the ‘spark of the divine.’”
“Oh, don’t go all churchy on me.”
Harry just laughed. “What do you think, cousin Mary?” he asked.
“I should like one of those great glass globes,” I said.
Papa laughed as though I’d made a joke. I leaned back against the seat, ignoring the jouncing. The spark of the divine. The stuff of life itself.
Harry was a good friend to me all that year, most kind.
No, not kind— kindness implies doing something one would rather not, and Harry, I think, genuinely enjoyed my company.
He often solicited my opinion on scientific matters, first with the mock gravity of one humoring a child, and then with real interest. He was like me in many ways: shy, odd, clever, passionate about answering the questions the world posed.
Sadly he caught consumption and we lost him.
His death, in the very room where I now reside, was for me a harrowing X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X? X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X? X?X? X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X? X?X? X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X? X?X? X?X?X?X?X?
Apologies, Holzmann, I let my pen run away with me. It is my research you care about, not my juvenile melancholy. I have scratched out the extraneous details. I mention Harry only because he influenced the path of my experiments in several ways:
As previously mentioned, he introduced me to electrical fire.
His subsequent passing associated it forever in my mind with life and death. The phrase the spark has gone out echoed in my mind for months after.
It seemed as though that strange awakening the shock brought about never entirely went away.
Whenever I see a girl or lady who reminds me of my electrical companion, I feel a phantom shock pass through me.
Electricity is never far from my mind, for it seems to have imprinted permanently upon my physiology.
I soon began to wonder what else it could do.
My father, who was also very fond of Harry, had tolerated my interest in the sciences whilst he lived. However, he never truly believed I understood as much as Harry claimed. Afterward, without our mutual friend to tie us together, I was exiled from his library for good.
In his will, Harry left each of us Bennet girls a legacy. The others got a few pounds each. I alone got something special. Harry left me a book. Reverend Quindley’s Admonishments for Godly Young Ladies . It has been my constant companion ever since.