P&P The Untold Stories: Postponing the Northern Tour

What led the Gardiners to choose Derbyshire instead of the Lake District for their summer travels with Elizabeth?

Early Summer, 1812

The cat had just begun dancing with the mouse when Susan cried, “Papa, Papa! Come listen to Mama’s newest story!”

Margaret Gardiner turned to see her husband leaning against the doorjamb of the nursery, his smile weary but warm. Now all three children were calling to him, begging him to take part in the bedtime ritual he was, of late, rarely at home to witness. But she saw the slump of his shoulders and the pallor of his face; something was wrong.

Or was it? When he met her gaze, he winked, then tapped one finger to the corner of his eye. She nearly laughed aloud: he was pointing to the fine lines there, which, only yesterday, he had first noticed. She had said the lines were not that noticeable, and if they bothered him, he ought to get more sleep. He had said that, now that he had in fact noticed them, the lines were very noticeable indeed, and they did not bother him, for they were proof that he was becoming a wise old man.

“He is ten years older than you, Maggie!” her sister had exclaimed when learning of their engagement. Hattie always had been fond of stating the obvious, even while missing the point: Edward Gardiner was a man with more energy and ambition than many men ten years his junior—Hattie’s young buck of a husband included.

Still, there were days—weeks, if this last stretch was any indication—when Edward’s business interests weighed heavily on him.

Maggie closed her handmade storybook with great care—she had rushed when trying to sew the pages together—and said, “I believe that is as good a place as any to stop this evening.”

“No, Mama, no!” Susan, Peter, and Lucy cried in unison.

“Papa,” said Peter, throwing off his blanket and climbing down from his bed, “you must tell Mama—”

“I must tell Mama nothing, young man,” said Edward, in a tone that caused the boy to go still. “It is unbecoming of you to disregard her decision, and more unbecoming still to think I would support such disobedience.”

Peter stared up at his father, his eyes filling with tears, but Edward did not soften; he only cocked his head to one side, eyebrows raised.

Chin trembling, her six-year-old turned to her and gave an unsteady bow. “I beg your pardon, Mama.”

“Thank you, Peter,” she murmured, and then Edward swooped into the room, scooping his son into his arms as if he were a sack of grain. Soon Peter was giggling—and then so were the girls, for Edward made sure to tickle each on the feet or under the chin before giving all three of them a gentle kiss on their foreheads and wishing them a good night.

“Forgive me,” he said to Maggie, as they descended the stairs together. “Had I not interrupted, they may have fallen asleep before you left the room.”

“Oh, they never fall asleep after I have been reading to them. They have a thousand questions to ask.” She laughed softly. “I am not a very successful writer of bedtime stories, if I cannot lull my own children to sleep!”

“Of bedtime stories, perhaps not, but of stories—those meant for thinking, curious humans of any age—well, you are a superb author, my dear.”

She laughed again, this time with an edge she wished she could have subdued. There were days when she wanted nothing more than to be an author—superb or not, it hardly mattered. Oh, to see one of her books in print! Her handmade volumes hardly qualified as published works; they were little more than a collection of scrap paper, decorated with silly rhymes and even sillier illustrations. True, her children adored these productions, but they did so only because they were her children.

Edward frowned at her then—he possessed an uncanny talent for reading her expressions—but remained silent as they collapsed into their respective chairs. It was only seven o’clock, but she struggled to keep her eyes open. She had been up for well on fourteen hours, and Edward—well, he had dressed and departed before she had even risen from their bed.

“Dinner will be ready shortly, sir, ma’am,” said Sally, poking her head into the parlor and startling Maggie half to death—Edward, too, if the sudden straightening of his posture was any indication.

When the maid had left, Maggie asked, “Do you suppose we will be awake when dinner is served?”

“If we are caught snoring in the soup,” he replied, smiling wryly, “we might have to find a new cook, and God knows we pay this one enough as it is.”

Maggie bit her lip, but it did no good, for the words spilled forth anyway: “You know I do not mind cooking—”

Edward cleared his throat. “Maggie.”

“Oh, Edward, I am no fine lady, only a bookseller’s daughter from Lambton!”

“I have—we have enough money for any cook in London, Margaret Gardiner.”

“You sound sterner now than you did with Peter!” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “You must be very anxious to avoid my cooking.”

His lips quirked, but he maintained his grave tone: “Maggie, do not be ridiculous—”

“And by any cook in London,” she continued, “do you happen to mean one of those French chefs stranded here by Napoleon’s war? For I am fond of a good ragout…”

He gave up the fight and threw back his head, laughing until there were tears in his eyes. Her witticism had not be that witty, so she suspected he laughed more from exhaustion than good humor. She knew what would happen when his laughter subsided: the stoop would return to his shoulders; his lips would fall back into a frown.

“What is it, dearest?” she murmured, when her prediction came to pass.

He sighed. “I see why you and Lizzy get on so well.”

“Lizzy?” Maggie tilted her head. “What has Lizzy to do with your doleful mood?”

“Nothing at all—or perhaps everything. I was thinking that you and Lizzy both have a talent for making me laugh.”

“Then we shall laugh you out of your fatigue during our upcoming journey to the Lakes—”

He met her eyes, and she understood: they would not be going to the northern lakes, after all.

“Are matters so very bad, then?” she asked, hoping he did not hear the slight tremor in her voice.

“You might say matters are quite good.” One corner of his mouth lifted, then fell. “Our bid on the Smithfield contract was accepted.”

“But Edward!” She clapped her hands together. “That is wonderful news!”

“Yes, if you do not mind being in London when we are supposed to be touring the north.”

“Ah, well, I suppose you had little choice in the timing of the matter.”

“To win the bid, I agreed to begin earlier than I had initially planned, so…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “There is nothing for it, Maggie, but to say I chose my business interests over a previous commitment to my family.”

“Oh, but you must not blame—”

“Come now, my dear, do not attempt to exonerate me. I know my own sins, or at least some of them: I acted out of self-interest.”

How could she help loving this man in whom ambition always warred with love and duty? Hattie may have thought him too old and not particularly handsome (“He is balding, Maggie!”), but had she not seen him, this man who worked tirelessly to build a successful business, even while making time for little kindnesses, such as helping old Mrs. Miller, the washerwoman, carry her heavy basket of laundry across a bustling Gracechurch Street?

“Perhaps, in this instance, you did choose your business interests,” Maggie acknowledged, “but your decision benefits more than yourself: you are able to pay your employees well, and you are providing a legacy for your children.”

“I might provide a better legacy by spending more time with them. Bah!” He shook his head. “There is no use dwelling on the matter. I have made the decision and now must live with the consequences: yours and Lizzy’s disappointment.”

“I am not—”

“Do not deny it, Maggie: you wanted to visit the lakes; you wanted to see what has inspired Wordsworth and so many other poets.”

She shrugged. “What is done is done. And Lizzy will feel quite the same.”

When he raised an eyebrow in a very Lizzy-like way, Maggie laughed.

“Well, she will say nothing to us of her disappointment,” Maggie conceded.

“That hardly makes it any better.”

“No, of course not, for she is your favorite niece, and you hate to disappoint her.”

He placed a hand on his chest. “Do you accuse me, Madam, of loving one niece above another?”

Maggie grinned. “If we were speaking of our children, I would not dare claim you apply your affections unevenly. But with your Bennet nieces, yes: there is no question who holds the lion’s share of your affections—or at least your admiration.”

“Oh, come now. I admire each of my nieces in turn: there is no one, save you, who is more compassionate than Jane Bennet.”

“Jane is indeed a dear. Though she was out of spirits this winter, she could not have been kinder or more helpful during her visit.”

“And Mary is becoming quite accomplished.”

“She certainly puts in a great deal of effort.”

“As for Kitty…” Edward bit his lip. “I rather like what she does with her bonnets.”

Maggie laughed. “Why, yes! She does have a talent for ornamentation. I had no idea you noticed such things.”

“I am not sure that I do, but I did not know what else to say. As for Lydia…”

“Oh, do tell me what accolade you will give Lydia!”

“She is very…spirited.”

“Then I will make sure to invite her to stay with us soon—perhaps for the whole of August, when there is nothing to do except fan ourselves and wish for a breeze to clear away the stink of the city.”

He laughed and held up his hands. “Very well, I admit defeat! I would not wish to spend four continuous weeks with Lydia.”

“She is, perhaps, too much like her mother,” Maggie said, before she could think better of it.

Edward arched a brow. “You have never been fond of my sister, have you?”

She thought of prevaricating, but was too fatigued to be polite. “No, dearest, I am not fond of her. I know I should be. Fanny is always hospitable, but—oh, how can she be your sister? You are as similar as chalk and cheese!”

“And you and Hattie—as like as two peas, are you?”

Maggie’s lips quirked. “Perhaps not, but compared to you and Fanny, my sister and I may as well be twins.”

“We used to be remarkably alike once,” he murmured.

“Did you really?”

“When we were children, yes. She is only two years my junior, and she loved nothing better than pretending we managed a store together. She was the owner; I was the clerk.”

“You were a patient older brother. I am not sure Peter would allow Susan or Lucy to be his employer!”

Edward leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Then I should be sure to talk with him about showing more respect to—”

“Oh no, please do not scold him! I was only making an observation.”

“Well, in my case, I was happy to have a playmate. Our sister Euphemia, being several years older, had no interest in us.” Edward smiled. “Do you know, Lizzy sometimes reminds me of Fanny.”

“Surely not! Lizzy is her father’s daughter, through and through.”

“In many ways, yes, but she and Fanny have similar coloring—”

“Oh well, in appearance, perhaps there are some similarities, but—”

“And they share a certain kind of curiosity about human nature.”

Maggie pursed her lips but said nothing. Lizzy liked to study others so that she might understand them or, if she could not, then she might at least laugh at them. But Fanny wished only to gossip and discover how she might use others to help her marry off her daughters.

“I sometimes think,” Edward continued, tipping his head back and closing his eyes, “that if mine and Fanny’s father had been more like Thomas Bennet—”

Maggie could not hold back her snort. “And since when did you begin thinking of your brother-in-law as the ideal father?”

“I have not the highest opinion of Bennet,” conceded Edward. “He buries his head in his books, rather than confront any difficulty, no matter how small.”

Maggie suspected the difficulty he avoided most assiduously was not small at all: he had married a woman wholly unsuited to him.

“But in one respect,” Edward continued, “he has won my admiration: he has encouraged his daughters, at least those with any interest, in developing their minds.”

“Encouraged may be too strong a word,” said Maggie. “He has certainly not resisted Lizzy and Mary’s attempts to educate themselves beyond what is usually expected for young ladies.”

“That may be true,” said Edward, “but my own father deliberately discouraged Fanny from pursuing any sort of education beyond basic reading and writing.”

“Did she ever wish to be educated?” Maggie could hardly imagine Fanny Bennet holding a book of philosophy or history, much less reading it.

“She had no interest in abstract subjects, but anything practical she loved. Consider our make-believe store: we sold fabrics, of course,” he said, smiling. “She would tell me, in great detail, the color and designs of each bolt of fabric we ‘owned,’ so that I could write an inventory in our account book. Then she was the one who balanced our ledgers, adding and subtracting for each bill and payment we received from our imaginary suppliers and customers.”

“Would she really?” From what little Maggie knew of the Bennet finances, Fanny seemed supremely uninterested in the household accounts.

“Oh yes, she was quite talented at arithmetic. More than once, I found her flipping through my books on mathematics, scribbling down problems so that she might try them, too. I became vexed and told my parents that they needed to purchase her a book of her own.” He sighed. “And that was the beginning of the end of Fanny’s short career as a student.”

“Was your father very…angry?” she asked quietly. Though Edward rarely talked of his youth—this story about their imaginary fabric store was perhaps the longest childhood tale he had shared—she had heard enough from Fanny and Euphemia to realize that the former Mr. Gardiner had been a bellicose man, especially when drinking.

Edward looked away. “He was not as angry as I was at myself. After a rather liberal use of his belt—”

“Your father whipped you?” Maggie blurted, then winced. She thought immediately of the scar she had sometimes traced along her husband’s spine. Had this line of knotted flesh come from that day—or some other?

Edward said only, “Afterward, he required us both to sit through a lecture on the proper behavior for boys and girls. Boys studied and worked; girls married and had children. I remember thinking, Yes, that is true. It was Fanny who said, ‘But you are a father, so boys can have children, too. Why then can I not have my own schoolbooks?’”

“Did he…did he use the belt on her, as well?” Maggie whispered. Switches and belts had been common enough punishment among the children of Lambton, but not in her parents’ household, where Rousseau’s Emile, or on Education held a treasured place on the family’s overflowing bookshelves.

“Oh no, my father did not think it proper to strike girls.” Edward looked away, then added, “He used the belt on me again, this time with Fanny as a witness. For days, she cried whenever she saw me.”

Her own eyes filling with tears, Maggie resolved never again to think badly of Fanny Bennet.

“We were only eight and six,” Edward continued, as if somehow their youth made such punishments easier to bear. “And then our parents bought Fanny a new doll and a beautiful tea set, and soon our fabric store was forgotten.”

They fell silent for a long while, and Margaret found herself staring up at the ceiling, wondering how her choices—good and bad—would impact the lives of their children.

“One incident, no matter how terrible,” said Edward, eventually, “does not shape an entire life, so you must not think Fanny is the woman you see now merely because of my father’s actions on that single day.”

“No, perhaps not,” said Maggie, “but one incident, one terrible incident, may make certain choices more palatable.”

“Yes,” he said, sighing, “especially when Fanny was liberally rewarded with gifts and praise for behaving as my parents expected. And it is in this respect that Bennet has done well toward Lizzy. When she wishes to discuss some idea that amuses or interests him, he gives her that rarest of gifts: his undivided attention.”

“How difficult it is to be a parent!” mused Maggie. “Or at least a good parent. One must shake loose all one’s bad habits and worn out beliefs without shaking loose all the rest of oneself in the process!”

Edward said nothing, but his gaze was so intent that she knew he was on the verge of saying something she would not wish to hear.

“I am not,” she said, huffing, “speaking of myself.”

“Of course you are. Your stories…your writing… you continually put them aside, or denigrate them, claiming you ought to be doing more for—”

“Edward.”

He made a sound but said no more on the subject. Instead, he rose from his chair and went to the mantelpiece, where she noticed, for the first time, a vase of yellow roses.

“I almost forgot about these,” he said, cheeks reddening as he held out the vase. “You know old Mr. Bainbridge, always peddling his flowers, so when I saw them, I thought—well, they are not Wordsworth’s daffodils, nor do they begin to make up for the loss of our northern tour, but I hoped—”

She rose from her chair and wrapped her fingers around his. They held the vase together for a moment before she gently pulled it from his grasp and set it on one of the side tables.

“You are the most wonderful—” she began, but could say no more, for she was already in his arms, and they had no breath for speaking then.

“You are the most wonderful, too,” he said, when they came up for air, smiling. “I am so sorry, Maggie.”

“My darling man,” she said, kissing him lightly on the lips before taking up the vase and pressing her nose into the yellow petals. “Oh, these smell so sweet! These are better than daffodils, even if Wordsworth did not write about them. I suppose we must rely on Shakespeare for verses about roses, and as it happens, he was often a resident of London! Perhaps we should invite Lizzy to spend July here in town; we could take her to see as many plays as she…Ah, but no!” Maggie’s shoulder sank. “The best theaters will be closed, as it is not the Season.”

“Still,” said Edward, “your idea is sound: we ought to find an alternative for Lizzy, somewhere associated with an author she loves.”

“But do you have the time to travel at all this summer?”

He chewed on his lip, then said, “I can spare fifteen or twenty days near the end of July. That should give me enough time to begin work on the project, and then I may correspond with Burgess, who is capable enough to manage the business while I am away.”

“Well then!” Maggie grinned. “Why are you feeling so out of sorts? This is very good news indeed! There must be a poet or novelist who has written of the seaside, or perhaps the Cotswolds! What of Stratford-upon-Avon or—“

“No, none of those places,” Edward took her by the hands. “Let us go to Lambton.”

She blinked. “Lambton? My Lambton?”

“Is there any other?”

“Oh, Edward, there is nothing in Lambton that Lizzy could wish to—”

“Did you not say she should travel to a town known for a great author she loves?”

“No, you said that, and there is no great author from Lambton—”

“Margaret Gardiner, if you insult your talent again, I will take those roses back to Mr. Bainbridge.”

“Then he and I both will be very displeased,” said Maggie, smiling in spite of herself. “Truly, Edward, you are kind, but there is nothing at all in Lambton that can interest a lively mind like Lizzy’s!”

“Whatever do you mean? Have you not told me, time and again, of Derbyshire’s many beauties? Lizzy may climb one of those peaks the county is known for and stare at rocks. Then she may write a verse of her own, if she likes.”

Maggie laughed.

“And if she does not like,” said Edward, “she will still be happy to see the place where you lived—as will I. I have never been there, you know.”

Maggie bit her lip. Lambton! She had not returned since before her marriage. And while no family remained there, she did still correspond with two dear friends from her childhood.

“Do you really suppose she would—”

“In truth, Maggie, I believe Lizzy would be happy to travel anywhere in England with us, if it means she might escape Longbourn for a few weeks. Besides, you have described too many pretty walks, too many beautiful views, for her to be unhappy with the prospect.”

“Yes, the natural beauty of Derbyshire is unparalleled. Oh, and the grounds of Pemberley!”

“Pemberley?”

“It is a great house near Lambton, one that Lizzy knows something of, in fact.” Maggie laughed. “Yes, she may be quite interested in the grounds of Pemberley.”

“Well then?” Edward tilted his head. “What do you say, my dear?”

Maggie squeezed her husband’s hands. “Very well, then, yes! I heartily approve!”

“Good, good!” He gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek, his countenance now as hale and youthful as it had been when they married—or if not quite as youthful, then at least animated with enthusiasm. “To Derbyshire we shall go!”

Yes, to Derbyshire they would go. Maggie laughed and took up the yellow blossoms once again, breathing in deeply. Something beautiful lay ahead of them, she felt certain of it. Then again, with a love such as hers, something beautiful always rose up to meet her.

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