Edmund Bertram's Diary

‘And did you not think her a most superior performer?’ I asked. At which Fanny agreed that Miss Crawford was indeed a superior performer, and before very long we had agreed that she was a superior young woman in every way.

Monday 28 November

Fanny’s intimacy at the Parsonage continues and this afternoon, my mother wanting her, I walked to the Parsonage to find her. Mrs. Grant took me out into the shrubbery, where Fanny and Mary were sitting. Their being together was exactly what I wished to see, for they will do each other good, Fanny by losing some of her shyness, and Miss Crawford by having a friend of sense and intelligence.

‘Well,’ said Miss Crawford brightly when she saw me, ‘and do you not scold us for our imprudence in sitting out of doors so late in the year?’

‘I have been too busy with the housekeeping to be alarmed by anything else,’ said Mrs. Grant with a sigh.

Miss Crawford laughed, declaring she would never have any such grievances.

‘There is no escaping these little vexations, Mary, live where we may,’ said her sister. ‘And when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I dare say I shall find you with your vexations, just as I have them in the country.’

‘I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort,’ said Mary. ‘A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.’

‘You intend to be very rich?’ I asked.

‘To be sure. Do not you? Do not we all?’ she asked.

‘I cannot intend anything which it must be so completely beyond my power to command. Miss Crawford may choose her degree of wealth. She has only to fix on her number of thousands a year, and there can be no doubt of their coming,’ I said, my spirits sinking, for she could win the heart of any man she had a mind to, I was sure. ‘My intentions are only not to be poor.’

‘By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income, and all that,’ she said lightly. ‘I understand you — and a very proper plan it is for a person at your time of life, with such limited means and indifferent connexions. What can you want but a decent maintenance?

You have not much time before you; and your relations are in no situation to do anything for you, or to mortify you by the contrast of their own wealth and consequence,’ she went on satirical y. ‘Be honest and poor, by all means, but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you.’ She gave an arch smile. ‘I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.’

‘Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely what I have no manner of concern with,’ I said, answering her in a similarly lighthearted tone. ‘I do not mean to be poor. Poverty is exactly what I have determined against. Honesty, in the something between, in the middle state of worldly circumstances, is all that I am anxious for your not looking down on.’

‘But I do look down upon it, if it might have been higher. I must look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction.’

‘But how may it rise?’ I asked her. ‘How may my honesty at least rise to any distinction?’

She thought. ‘You ought to be in parliament, or you should have gone into the army ten years ago.’

‘That is not much to the purpose now; and as to my being in parliament, I believe I must wait till there is an especial assembly for the representation of younger sons who have little to live on. No, Miss Crawford,’ I went on more seriously, for she was looking very pretty and I thought that any man who could win her would be fortunate indeed, ‘there are distinctions which I should be miserable if I thought myself without any chance — absolutely without chance or possibility of obtaining — but they are of a different character.’

She laughed at me, but it was a laugh of friendship and not derision, so that, despite her words, I felt there was hope. Satisfied, I recollected that I had come to collect Fanny, and we made our adieus.

On the way out we were met by Dr Grant, who invited us to dinner tomorrow, and, being grateful to the Grants for taking notice of Fanny, I accepted for both of us. Then Fanny and I walked home together.

Wednesday 30 November

‘I am very glad the Grants thought of inviting you,’ I said to Fanny, when, at twenty past four this afternoon, we went down to the Parsonage in the carriage. ‘I knew how it would be. Now that my sisters are away, our neighbors are starting to realize that you are not a girl any longer, but a young woman, and I am sure more invitations will follow this one. I must look at you, Fanny, and tel you how I like you. As well as I can tel by this light, you look very nicely indeed. What have you got on?’ I asked her, for indeed the winter twilight was so dim I could scarcely tel.

‘The new dress that my uncle was so good as to give me on my cousin’s marriage. I hope it is not too fine; but I thought I ought to wear it as soon as I could, and that I might not have such another opportunity all winter.’