This chapter begins with a man nobody has met.
When word reaches Longbourn that the empty house at Netherfield has been taken, the whole neighbourhood settles where to seat him without knowing his face or his voice.
The Sentence That Smiles First
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Chapter 1)
The book opens with this. It sounds like common sense nobody would dispute.
Read it once more, though, and the speaker has quietly changed. The man himself never said he wanted a wife.
The ones who want it are the houses with daughters.
The moment a household calls its own wish a truth universally acknowledged it stops being a wish and becomes a fact, and once it is a fact nobody need argue with it.
The voice telling the story does not explain the reversal. It writes truth and moves on. The reader is left to laugh on their own.
Someone Moves into Netherfield
Mrs. Bennet brings her husband the news. Netherfield is taken at last.
A young man, and from the north of England. He came down on Monday in a chaise and four, took the place the moment he saw it, and the servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.
His name is Bingley. Single, with four or five thousand a year.
Having said the figure, Mrs. Bennet adds the rest. What a fine thing for our girls.
Her husband pretends not to follow. How can it possibly affect them, he asks.
She is exasperated. It means he will marry one of them.
Saying He Will Not Go
Mr. Bennet declares he has no intention of calling. He offers to send a few lines instead.
Bingley may have whichever of the girls he chooses, he says, though a good word for his little Lizzy must go in.
His wife flares up. Lizzy is not half so handsome as Jane nor half so good-humoured as Lydia, so why is it always Lizzy?
His answer does not defend any of them. None of the five has much to recommend her, he says, and then adds that Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.
His wife presses. You take delight in vexing me.
He does not rise to it. He has a high respect for her nerves, he says, and he has been on friendly terms with them for twenty years at least.
Only one person in this conversation is laughing.
Twenty-three years together had not been enough for Mrs. Bennet to tell when her husband was in earnest, and he had never once shown the least wish to help her learn.
The Man Who Had Already Gone
Mr. Bennet, in fact, is among the very first to call on Bingley.
He meant to go from the start. He also insisted to the last that he would not.
The household finds out the evening after the visit. Watching his second daughter trim a hat, he drops a line into the room. He hopes Mr. Bingley will like it.
Mrs. Bennet retorts. How are they to know what Mr. Bingley likes, when they are not to visit him?
Elizabeth calms her. They will meet him at the assemblies, and Mrs. Long has promised to introduce him.
Her mother does not believe that either. Mrs. Long has two nieces of her own and will hardly put another woman’s daughter forward.
Kitty coughs. Her mother tells her to stop, and her father joins in. Kitty has no discretion in her coughs. She times them ill.
Mary wants to contribute something worth hearing and cannot find a way to begin.
Mrs. Bennet cries out. She is sick of Mr. Bingley.
At this her husband looks all regret. He is sorry to hear it, and why did she not say so before? Had he known as much that morning he certainly would not have called, and as the visit is paid they cannot escape the acquaintance now.
The room turns over. Their astonishment was exactly what he had wanted.
Today, What Gets Settled Before the Meeting
Bingley never speaks in this chapter. He never appears.
Even so, by the end he has been made a son-in-law, and the neighbourhood has settled whom he will dance with at the assembly. Lydia announces that she is not afraid, for though she is the youngest she is the tallest.
All the while the materials that built him that place were one carriage and one figure of income.
This is what the series will follow for forty chapters. Everyone reads other people, and most of the reading is done before they meet.
What have you already settled about someone you have not yet met?