“I thank you for that, though I may have to sway you to my way of thinking. Is your opinion immutable?”
“I try not to cast my opinions in stone. Even casting them in ice gets me in trouble 9 times out of 10—or even pudding.”
“Let us try a thought experiment. I believe you have done quite a lot of that lately.”
Elizabeth frowned.
“Do not fear. I have not encountered anybody with a loose tongue. I simply surmised as much, and you confirmed it with your expression. May I presume there is no need for me to go tediously through the logic when you will figure it out for yourself anyway?”
“No.”
“Let us suppose you had children. Assume nearly infinite wealth, which might not be so far-fetched as one might surmise.”
“Either discuss or tease. Make up your mind.”
“My apologies. Where were we? Let us suppose you were preternaturally afraid for your children’s safety, so you decided not to expose them toanydanger. You have two nursemaids for each, one governess per child, and a footman standing guard every minute of the day. Girls are not allowed to jump, skip, swim, climb trees, or anything else remotely amusing or dangerous. Boys cannot ride, shoot, swim, skate, or go out in boats. None are allowed out of the house if it is snowing, raining, or likely to do so within the fortnight. What would you end up with?”
Elizabeth shook her head in confusion. “I presume you would raise the most timid and worthless children that ever lived. None of them would know how to doanything, and the first coldthat came through the house would carry them off. Should they manage to survive, they would have no—”
She stopped in the middle, guessing where the discussion was going, and took up the tale herself, continuing where her father left off. “No resiliency. No character. No real strength. To be honest, you have something close to a real example of that right here in Longbourn.”
Bennet frowned, and she explained, “Anne was sickly for years and she never escaped Rosings until a fortnight ago. She has no accomplishments except a knowledge of literature that will put you to shame.”
“Aha! That makes some sense. Carry on, since you know where I am going better than I do.”
She grumbled but complied. “Suppose we took the opposite tack. All children had to sleep with a thin blanket in the stables, or with the pigs if they were naughty or the moon was new. They are fed only gruel unless they can win some contest of prodigious strength. Their parents never lift a finger except to mete out punishment. Any troubles they get into with villagers or schoolmates are theirs to solve. They spend all day, every day, in gruelling training for a life of toil and hardship.”
“I may be wrong, but you probably described your brother Collins’ upbringing, or near enough to it. His father was an illiterate savage.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, but Bennet said, “Woman grown. You are not going to get all missish on me, are you?”
“I suppose not. Shall we continue?”
“In that case, you would have either a completely broken person, or someone as tough as nails who could withstand anything. If their spirit was not completely broken, they could stand up to anyone and everyone. No problem would be toolarge for them to tackle. Any opponent would either come to heel or be smote.”
“I suspect, mathematically, you would get some reasonable distribution between dead or broken children and indestructible warriors.”
“Exactly. I will leave it as an exercise for the student to find an example closer than poor William. He endured a difficult upbringing with an unreasonable and ignorant father. Suppose the same idea were applied, but with a father whoneededhis son to be strong enough to carry the weight of centuries past and yet to come? No sleeping in the stables or among the pigs, but a long childhood of lessons and duty.”
“You would have a man who would not find the daughter of a country squire handsome enough to tempt him.”
“Exactly!”
Elizabeth finished her claret; he reached for the brandy.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, but her father said, “Come, come, Elizabeth. If I am to beFather, then you are to beElizabeth, and you will drink brandy with me.”
“Why do I feel you are trying to get me in my cups for some nefarious purpose?”
“Perhaps I am, but that is neither here nor there. Let us make a scale between those extremes. Where would you put my parenting style? Let us disregard how well or poorly I performed my duty to my family vis-à-vis dowries and the like. Let us speak about the rest.”
Elizabeth took a sip of brandy and grimaced. “If we made a scale from, say 0-100, I would say Anne would be 20-30. Poor William probably hit 70-80, Mr Darcy probably 70, the Lucases perhaps 50, and you would be in the range of 60-70. You were harsh with Jane and me, yet not cruel about it. Yougrew lazy with the younger girls, but I suppose you could argue that training Jane and I to act in your stead constituted success. Your indolence forced us grow up as quickly as we could, though she obviously had the advantage. Jane has been doing 2/3 of Mama’s duties since she was 10, and I joined when I left my heathen savage period, and Mary slightly later. We are all fairly resilient, so I suppose the result speaks for itself.”
“Well done, Elizabeth. It is entirely too bad women cannot stand for Parliament. You can rationalise with the best, and I doubt very much thatanybodyenters one of your awkward conversations and emerges on the other side anywhere except where you put them. You are too generous with me, but I will chalk that up to your nature.”
“So, what conclusion does that leave us with,Papa?”
Bennet laughed heartily. “Too late, Elizabeth. You cannot stuff the chick back in the egg. Let me set your mind at rest. If you will give me leave to hold my own opinion in my own head, then I assert that your mother and Iare, in fact, bad parents.Chance alone allowed all you children to come out reasonably well, but it could just as easily have gone wrong. Suppose Lydia hadnotdiscovered, by pure luck, that Wickham was a scoundrel. I taught her so poorly that she might well have ruined the family while I sat here smoking my pipe. She and Kitty were certainly headed in that direction.”
