Whether you’re a devoted reader of #Austenesque fiction or not, you’ve likely come across Mrs. Bennet’s waxing poetic about Darcy’s 10,000-a-year. Her words underscore the centrality of wealth in Austen’s works.
While others, like my friend Heather Moll, have delved into what a certain income could afford in Austen’s Britain, that’s not the focus of this column. Instead, I took a different approach: who, between Darcy and Bingley, is truly wealthier?
We readily accept Darcy as the wealthier man—and by the measure of early-industrial England, he was. In my book, In Plain Sight, I used the commonly accepted circumference of Pemberley—ten miles around—to give readers an idea of its potential and convert it into acres.
Anything that might justifiably be found upon an estate of more than 5,100 acres—Pemberley, it is called—with over two dozen tenant farms earning more than £10,000 a year.
Pemberley is vast and, given Derbyshire’s geography divided by ridges, could not be much larger without becoming unmanagable. However, the fundamental essence of Pemberley, where anyone associated with the estate holds great loyalty, would be constrained by the nature of the land, unlike on the expansive American Great Plains where only rivers pose natural barriers. At some point, even if renting Darcy land, tenants and villagers would look to Derby not Lambton.
I am an adherent of Karl Deutsch’s theory where geography determines affinity to an identity. His book Nationalism and Social Communication (1953) essentially defines when you stop being French and begin being Spanish—although an argument could be made that there is a point in the Pyrenees where you are too far from Paris or Madrid to identify with either. They are Basque.
This is my way of saying that Darcy’s land wealth reached its logical extent by the time of Pride and Prejudice. Plus, there is no imaginary world where Darcy would seek to sell Pemberley to convert it into hard cash. In The Sailor’s Rest, I used the usually accepted multiplier for an estate’s sale price—thirty times annual income—to establish the value of Kellynch at £60,000 if sold. While Pemberley is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds (£300,000?), a legendary fortune, it is paper value, good only for mortgages. But nobody is going to hold a rummage sale for Darcy.
True, Darcy could purchase satellite estates, but by the second decade of the Nineteenth Century, investing in the feedstock of industry—coal, iron, canals, etc.—would be a better way to grow income than increasing productivity across dozens of tenant farms.
That brings us to Charles Bingley. We usually see the man as rich but nowhere near as wealthy as Darcy. By the scale of the time, this was accurate. However, let’s go a bit more modern and look at the fortune of the new man, Bingley.
Here are the metrics: Bingley is accounted to have £5,000 a year. We know that all his income comes from investments and not land. There is no accurate division between income from his investment in commercial activities and his holdings in government securities.
I am not going to suggest that Bingley is wealthier than Darcy, but I am quite comfortable in saying that he is AS wealthy.
The Eighteenth Century saw the British (mostly) Honorable East India Company reduce the Moghul Empire and the Maharajas of the independent states. Along with that exploitation came the systematic looting of centuries of accumulated treasure.
The Hindu vocabulary was also appropriated in part (thug is my personal favorite). Amongst those is a very appropriate and now very English word: nabob. Its connotation is one of being filthy rich. A nabob is a man who returns from India with a fortune of over £100,000. The other equivalent in the 1700s would be the sugar barons of the West Indies, who built their wealth on the backs of slave labor to fill the insatiable British appetite for sweets.
Bingley was not a nabob in the traditional sense of the word; however, he possessed nabob-sized riches.
We cannot know what Bingley’s part ownership in cotton mills put in his pocket. For the sake of argument, we can get a low-end estimate by assuming that he had invested his entire stash in the Three Percents. These offered the safest returns, guaranteed by the British government. Bingley, likely a savvy investor, would not, however, have put everything into the government’s war effort. HEIC shares, coal mines, and cotton mills were also a license to make money but were subject to great risk—privateers and fires, to name just two. But he probably did hide the odd hundred or thousand in such ventures.
So, what was Bingley worth? OK…here it is…my guess
£5,000 is 3 percent of…£166,666
Bingley has money that would make the most ardent advocate of exploitation jealous. Is it any wonder that nobody ever suggests that Bingley must get his hands on a dowry to replace Louisa’s £20,000? Why is it that his “go-to” when Caroline steps beyond enough is to release her dowry? Because he can afford it! Even if their servants rob Jane and Charles blind, it will take them decades to reduce the pile.
Another way of looking at it—referring to the Kellynch example (I estimated it to have only Longbourn-sized income after Sir Walter’s neglect)—Bingley could pay the market price for the estate in cash and still be a nabob. However, Bingley may be affable, but he is not an idiot. I bet he could have gotten the estate for 50!
A regular argument for Darcy to marry money (usually made by the Earl of Matlock in our variations) was that Georgiana’s £30,000 would put a dent in his bank accounts. The worry on the part of most estate owners was a real one. Darcy was land-rich but not necessarily cash-poor like other estate owners. However, we usually allow him the luxury of having the dowry set aside by his father. We also portray him as utterly unlike Wickham and have him eschewing wastrel ways.
In my opinion, Bingley was as rich as Darcy. This, too, may offer another explanation for why Darcy befriended the young man. While compassion did play a role in helping a tradesman’s son, we do not see Pemberley’s scion taking a blacksmith’s son under his wing. He did find, I think, common ground with Bingley, in that they were equals in wealth and that Bingley, unlike Wickham, would never sponge off him.
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Thank you. Please enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming novel In Westminster’s Halls. ©2024 by Donald P. Jacobson. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction is prohibited.
From Chapter Twelve where we are introduced to a different sort of Jane Bennet
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At some point, Jane felt her attention divide. One part of her consciousness was present for Lizzy. However, for the other, Elizabeth’s voice receded into the background as Jane watched the planes of her face change with each new possibility. The shadows sweeping across fields as the sun moved behind clouds was the closest parallel Jane could draw. She knew her sister’s process, one honed over years of trying to make sense of the world.
When Papa’s express arrived, Jane’s heart leaped. Papa was not one to spend the money—even if the rider was one of Uncle Gardiner’s warehousemen—unless there was an excellent reason. The cause must have been urgent if Mr. Bennet overcame his reluctance to set pen to paper and dispensed with his usual pinchpenny ways.
Little had changed in Longbourn’s life since the Prime Minister’s summons; much was different for Jane with Lizzy away. Yes, she wrote regularly, if not daily. But letters were not the same as having Elizabeth in the room, moderating Mama’s incessant prattle. How Jane missed being able to close her eyes amidst the torrent to slide an eldritch hand into the rich brown-hued ball of energy buzzing at her elbow. The vivacious impertinence as they grew over the years had become the shield behind which Jane hid.
Jane did not begrudge Lizzy Papa’s decision to bring her to town. None could deny that the second daughter stood head and shoulders above her four sisters in the father’s estimation. In many ways, Lizzy was the distaff flip side of Papa’s masculine coin.
Lizzy has Papa’s curiosity and wit. Although she would never say it, I am certain that Lizzy keenly regrets not having been born a boy. I watched her envy as the Lucas brothers left for school.
Her agile mind could never be held captive by traditional female pursuits, much as Mama tried to force her square peg into the ordained round hole. Papa did encourage her, but he knew that the world would never allow her its freedom, so he did not do too much to avoid currying disappointment.
Lizzy’s excitement at his notice of her capabilities by taking her to London as his secretary was palpable all those sennights ago.
While she depended on Elizabeth to be her emotional counterpoint, Jane did not believe –for one second—that she had ceded to her sister any authority on how she felt. She was no Kitty who negotiated life as Lydia’s shadow. Nor was she Mary, who could not turn to Lizzy for emotional comfort, the gulf of two years too great in Longbourn’s parlor—and thus found solace in her books.
Jane scoffed now, as she always did, at the idea that there was no calm Miss Bennet—a creature floating across the stage like Hamlet’s ethereal Ophelia—without Lizzy Bennet. True, Mrs. Radcliffe or Miss Burney might have written a character like her as a plot device to give contrast to her impertinent sister and hold up society’s behavioral ideal to questioning scrutiny. Perhaps there would not be enough Lizziness without Jane’s serenity. But she was no caricature, a bland soul unable to present anything more than a polite smile.
She knew her mind. Yes, she was calm but not placid. Placid was a state of being, a limpid adjective, undisturbed, characterized by the saying Still waters run deep. Jane realized that her demeanor fooled many. But, to her, calm was an active noun.
Jane Bennet was, by nature, a calm woman and always had been. That was her defense against her mother’s effusions. Calm, though,was something many people often replaced with a mile wide and an inch deep. However, life at Longbourn taught her to protect her heart to avoid damaging her sensitive spirit. She did not possess Lizzy’s peculiar ability to forget the past except when it brought her pleasure. Her mother’s every slight, every loud exclamation, echoed through the corridors of her mind, rattling her. Then it was Elizabeth who soothed her until the disturbance faded.
Many a time, Jane wished she could filch some of Lydia’s carefree attitude, if only for one moment of inner peace. However, try as she might, she could not overlook Mary’s reddened cheeks or Kitty’s bejeweled lashes any more than she could ignore a baby wren fallen from its nest sitting forlorn on Longbourn’s law, cheeping for its mama.
So, Jane imagined herself as a rock in Longbourn’s stream, parting the flow, resisting water’s ever-present force. She presented to the world a peaceful and unvarying face akin, or so she imagined, to one of the great blue ice glaciers high above Switzerland. Those of brief acquaintance with Jane Bennet saw only a beautiful woman unwilling or unable to exhibit her feelings, if she had any in the first place.
The underestimation of her character was a mistake that did her no good. However, that had been her place in the Longbourn hierarchy, one amongst a family filled with singular behavioral quirks that rendered all but one board flat.
Papa hid behind books and sarcasm.
Mama feared the north wind that brought hale men to their knees.
Mary judged all with fusty arrogance.
Kitty fretted and coughed.
Lydia flirted, flittered, and tried to steal every scene.
Jane floated wakelessly across life’s pond, showing absolute tranquility.
Lizzy sampled life, collected character sketches, and tasted every flower.
The only Longbourn residents who were not epitomes of some character defect were the servants: Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Sally, and James. They went about their lives doing their work and taking their enjoyment without dramatic pauses onto which unseen observers could project interpretation. Would that she could live as they did!
The phrase ‘jewel of the county’ left her nonplussed. She was nothing more than a perfectly shaped nose, a classic profile, and sculpted eyebrows. Everyone in the neighborhood, particularly the family’s friend Sir William Lucas, praised her appearance to the skies.If only that, Jane still would have wanted to flee from her childhood home by any means, whether marriage or employment. She was worn by constantly trying to meet the community’s expectations perfectly.
But there was more, although nowhere near as taxing, but equally bothersome for a young woman approaching her majority.
Jane Bennet was tired of serving only as the counterpoint to her sister.
Being the canvas upon which her sister was rendered had become wearisome. Jane was more than colorful daubs that established a clear image of Elizabeth Bennet for the world to behold.
Thus, when Papa’s letter arrived, Jane resolved to treat the opportunity as more than an excursion again to play the pianoforte behind Elizabeth’s vocal exhibition or care for Aunt’s little ones. Jane resolved to establish herself on the stage as more than a backdrop. The first step was her escape from Longbourn. Only afterward could she establish herself independent of her sister, although that would have to wait until she poured the balm upon Lizzy’s ragged wounds of the heart.
Jane had dreams. She wanted a loving marriage to a man she could respect and who would cherish her.
Despite Mama’s desires, I will not be some rich man’s ornament!
Town was where she could begin to find that woman named Jane Bennet, and it would be that woman the world would know and, perhaps, want.
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