North West Reads Book 26: Longbourn by Jo Baker

From Lancaster author Jo Baker, Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of those seen but seldom heard.

Sarah still had memories of her family, her mother, father and baby brother. Her father, a handloom weaver, had taught her how to read and write, so she signed her full name when she picked up her wages rather than an ‘x’ that most of the other servants and labourers made. Mr Bennet was a good employer and his housekeeper and cook Mrs Hill, had been a second mother to Sarah. Typhus had taken Sarah’s family but had spared her, but having no other relatives she had been taken to the poorhouse and when old enough, mindful of the cost to the Parish of the destitute, Sarah was taken to work at Longbourn. It was not as grand an establishment as houses such as Netherfield Hall, but it was prosperous and respectable. Along with Mrs Hill’s husband, whose work included that of coachman, Longbourn’s servants were completed with the arrival of another child left alone in the world, Polly. Mary was her given name, but as there was already a Miss Mary at Longbourn, who as a daughter of the family was young Mary’s social superior, she had no choice but to accept being called Polly.

Life at Longbourn was far better than a life in the poorhouse, but the work was still hard, backbreaking and long. The hard graft of laundry day that had to render white items of clothing to look as new, as well as perfectly laundering the beautiful and expensive clothes of the household, frequently left Sarah’s hands so badly chapped that they bled. She ruefully notes that if Miss Elizabeth only knew how much work went into getting her petticoats pristine white, she would be less inclined to get so much mud on the hems on her countryside walks. The Bennets had five daughters that made for a huge amount of work. Jane and Elizabeth, the eldest two, were kind, intelligent and sensible; Mary was the middle child, studious and keen on music, but often overlooked and overshadowed by both her elder siblings and the two youngest girls, Kitty and Lydia. Five daughters but no son and heir for the estate; for Mrs Bennet, as her daughters had reached marriageable age, their prospects for good marriages were uppermost in her mind. When Netherfield Hall is finally let out after being shut up for a long period the hope for a good, eligible match for one of her eldest is in her sights.

Below stairs the servants follow the family’s lives. There are few secrets in a household with servants, taken for granted as they did their work and served the family’s needs; but they all had eyes and ears and carefully observed the comings and goings in the house. However, some secrets were so sensitive that they were kept successfully under wraps. Sarah is very observant and she notices things – such as meetings between Mrs Hill and Mr Bennet – that intrigue her, but that she knows better than to ask about.

Sarah had her own dream to emigrate to America and find a better life; a life where the work was not endless and she not beholden to anyone, to simply have a degree of independence. The family were kind to her. Jane and Elizabeth gave her their cast-off gowns, so Sarah did have some best clothes, albeit ones no longer in fashion. Mr Bennet allowed her to borrow books from his library, which she enjoyed reading in the little spare time she had at the end of the day when the work was done. But this life held no further prospects for her, and as the for the country, it had been at war with France under Napoleon for many years. Security in the form of a good marriage was difficult as there were fewer men around to choose from; the army and navy took the best, the war continued and was now being fought on the Iberian Peninsula.

Men in uniform were romantic and exciting to girls of the Bennet sister’s class. Kitty and Lydia were the giddiest about them in the Bennet household. However, the realities of life in the forces were far from romantic for the men who served, as Sarah observes one morning after being sent on an errand to the village. She hears, then witnesses, a flogging of a soldier. She finds this deeply distressing. Beneath the genteel façade of late Georgian society there was a more harsh and brutal reality, one that people of Sarah’s class were more likely to see and experience. The fear of revolution in Britain in the wake of the one that lost it its American colonies, and the other that followed that saw the French King and Queen losing their heads, made for a very nervous ruling class. The governments of the time suppressed anything that smacked of dissent. Even the most modest and reasonable calls for reform, both political and social, that arose because of the changes to people’s lives caused by the Industrial Revolution, were viewed as a threat to the established order. Discipline in the army, and navy, observed that morning by Sarah, were harsh and uncompromising; deserters faced the death penalty.

The demands of war meant that there was a dearth of working age men in the country, and the government taxed households who had male servants of fighting age. Having male servants, therefore, had become a bit of a status symbol. It was a surprise to Longbourn’s servants when they found out that Mr Bennet had secured a coveted male servant for them. Sarah had thought she’d seen a figure near the house one morning and this proved to be the man in question. James Smith, of good character and family, would take over coaching duties from Mr Hill (who was finding the demands of this role hard as he was getting older) and to wait on table. It would do no harm to a family seeking good marriages to show off how well they were doing.

Sarah is unimpressed with the quiet young man and keeps her distance from him as he is trained up to do the work. Mrs Hill and the others are happy that they have another pair of hands to help with the work, and Sarah grudgingly accepts that his help with the hard early morning chores lifts some of the burden from her. James is courteous and helpful, the family really like him, but he reveals little about himself or his background. Sarah feels that he is liked and trusted by the family because he is a man. She, however, instinctively knows that James is lying about something and bides her time for an opportunity to find out what this is and why.

While she waits and watches the work continues and is about to increase as Netherfield Hall is prepared for its new tenant. Even better the new tenant is an eligible, wealthy bachelor; the Bennet household buzzes with excitement but for Sarah and her colleagues it just means more work. However, the coming of Mr Bingley would bring Sarah into contact with another servant, one who brought the potential, it seemed to her, for better life. Ptolemy ‘Tol’ Bingley was one of Mr Bingley’s footmen. Handsome, charming and smartly dressed he provokes mixed reactions in Longbourn’s kitchen as he comes and goes with messages from Netherfield. Despite the name he is not related to Mr Bingley; in fact, he is the personification of another grim side of these times. Tol had been born on the Bingley family’s sugar plantation in the Caribbean and so had the surname of his owners.

Sarah is intrigued and attracted to this young man, who has ambitions to go to London and open a shop of his own selling the finest tobacco. Mrs Hill was not impressed with Tol and was concerned that Sarah was having her head turned by him. She does her best to dissuade Sarah from seeing him; James is also concerned lest she make an irreversible decision about her future. If she ran away and followed him to London it would not only affect her reputation but that of Longbourn itself. Should she leave there would be no coming back, and if it ended in failure she had nothing to fall back on nor job to return to. Whilst Sarah is pondering on what she feels she should do she remains intrigued by James and what his story is. As she spends more time around him, she comes to see that he cares a great deal for her.

More excitement is created in the Bennet household with the coming of the Militia to Meryton. Kitty and Lydia are giddy at the thought of the dashing officers about to be stationed so near to them, but Sarah has witnessed the reality of military life, and she is not the only one who does not feel happy at their presence. Sarah notices that James seems perturbed by their arrival. Worse, an officer begins to visit Longbourn and makes himself quite at home in the kitchen. To the family George Wickham is an officer and gentleman in the service of his country, but to the servants he is cocky, arrogant and over familiar with female members of the household. Poor Polly cannot see past his superficial charm, much to the alarm of Mrs Hill and Sarah who can see how vulnerable she is. Sarah notices that James is also wary of Wickham, but he cannot fully avoid him both in the dining room and in the kitchen, the latter a place that Wickham, as an officer, should not be frequenting at all.

Another visitor to Longbourn causes nervous ripples for the whole household. Reverend Mr Collins is set to inherit the house on Mr Bennet’s death. Mrs Bennet and her daughters have no right to inheritance and so would be left to the goodwill of relatives for a roof over their heads unless good marriages were found for all of them. Mrs Bennet hopes that Mr Collins will choose one of her girls. But it is not only their lives and futures that Mr Collins has the power to affect. Should he wish, he could dismiss all the servants and replace them with others of his choosing. Mrs Hill is determined not to end her days in the poorhouse and sets about providing Mr Collins with the best service she can and impresses the need for this upon the rest of the staff. Of course, Mr Collins is unable to win the hand of Elizabeth Bennet but instead is accepted by her friend, Charlotte Lucas. Mrs Hill had known Charlotte since she was a child, knows that she loves her lemon tarts and knows what makes good servants, and so feels hopeful that they will be secure in their jobs.

Unless you were male and wealthy (or had an education and a profession), you were relatively powerless to shape your future, and your life could change quite suddenly for good or ill. The Bennet sister’s futures depended on their choice of life partner, and as we know, Elizabeth and Jane are successful, but Lydia shows what could go wrong when youth and inexperience make for poor, and irreversible, decisions. This is also true for women of Sarah’s class, but along with the disadvantages forced on them because of their gender, they also have the class divide to contend with. An unmarried woman of the Bennet sister’s class would be an object of pity but would be unlikely to end up destitute or in the poorhouse. One wrong move by Sarah and the consequences would be disastrous. Lydia’s ‘indiscretion’ could be dealt with and covered up, but Sarah would have nothing and nobody to turn to should she ‘fall’ in any way. James also, as a propertyless servant, was vulnerable should he fall foul of the law.

For all the residents of Longbourn, beneath the quiet and respectable outward face of the household, uncertainty, anxiety and secrets simmered beneath. As the secrets and full stories begin to emerge, Sarah is left to decide where, and who with, her future lies. She had learnt a lot over the past year and knew that those with fewer choices in life had to tread a careful path and to take care that romantic dreams did not end up as real nightmares. A good, intelligent and sensible woman, Sarah comes to know that she can shape her own destiny. As she makes her choices for her future the residents of Longbourn set out on their own life journeys, some for better and others for worse.

The backdrop to Longbourn is a country with a veneer of stability and calm but is one where social and political tensions are bubbling beneath the surface. The government and ruling classes were fearful of a French-style revolution breaking out in Britain. The law was harsh on even the mildest of dissent or calls for greater representation for the common people; the country had been almost permanently at war with France since the Revolution and feared invasion by Napoleon’s armies. This excellent novel widens out the story of Pride and Prejudice to show a country unsettled and on high alert because of war. Whilst Jane Austen would have known little about the lives of the servants and workers who toiled to make the lives of the wealthy comfortable, Jo Baker’s excellently researched novel gives us an insight and a voice to the lives of these people (only noticed when needed but otherwise invisible) whose hard, physical work made the family look good and respectable, and a country that also seemed fine on the surface but was fearful and uncertain of the future in the face of the threat from abroad.

Image: ‘The mellow year is hastening to its close’, Edward Wilkins Waite (1854–1924) | Image credit: Bridgeman Images