Inquiring readers: Not often does news of great import come our way, such as this item unearthed from the depths of Andrew Capes’s crashed computer. His having retrieved it is nothing short of miraculous, for now he can share the rest of Charlotte Collins’ story with the world. If you found this news item as intriguing as I did, please let him know what you think of it in the comment section below! Article copyright (c) Andrew Capes.
Extract from the Hertfordshire Gazette, June 1876
Obituary Notice
Mrs Charlotte Collins of Longbourn Hall
We have been saddened recently to receive
notification of the death at the end of May, at
the advanced age of 92 years, of Mrs Charlotte
Collins, née Lucas, widow of the late Reverend
William Collins, of Longbourn Hall, near
Meryton. Mrs Collins is survived by her only
son, Thomas Collins, his wife Mary (née
Bennet), and her grandson, the Rt Hon. Sir
Timothy Collins PC, all of whom continue to
reside at Longbourn Hall.
Mrs Collins’s funeral at Meryton was attended
by a distinguished gathering of friends and
relations, many of whom had travelled great
distances to be present. Several members of the
extended Lucas family were there, although
Mrs Collins had outlived all her immediate
relations, and there were also representatives
and descendants of the former Bennet family,
with whom the Collinses had maintained
intimate connections for a great many years.
Among the latter were Mrs Elizabeth Darcy,
widow of the late Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy of
Pemberley in Derbyshire, and her niece, Mrs
Jane Lucas, daughter of the late Mr & Mrs
Charles Bingley of Freshfield Park in Yorkshire,
who is also the late Mrs Collins’s sister-in-law.
The occasion was graced with the presence of
Lydia, Lady Wickham, widow of Lieutenant
Colonel Sir George Wickham, Bart., late hero
of the French, American, and Affghan
campaigns. The Dowager Lady Wickham has
recently returned from India to pass her
remaining years with her son, Sir Arthur
Wickham de Bourgh, at his family home,
Rosings Park in Kent.
Charlotte Collins was born in March 1784, the
eldest of five children of Sir William and Lady
Lucas, latterly of Lucas Lodge near Meryton in
Hertfordshire. There she met and married the
Reverend William Collins, a cousin of the
Bennet sisters, in January 1812. The couple lived
at Hunsford in Kent where their son, Thomas
Collins, was born in 1813. In 1823, upon the
death of Mr Frederick Bennet, the Reverend
Mr Collins inherited Longbourn-house, an
estate of which Mrs Collins was destined to
remain mistress for over half a century.
Upon their removal to Longbourn, Mr and Mrs
Collins were pleased to allow Mr Bennet’s
widow and daughter Mary to continue to live in
the house, and to treat it as their home. Mary
had been entrusted under the terms of Mr
Bennet’s will with the care of his extensive library,
and she immediately set about this task
with the greatest diligence, continuing to
pursue improvements to the collection, chiefly
through a series of judicious acquisitions,
almost without interruption from that time
until the present day. Upon that occasion also,
Mr Collins desired that the name of the house
be changed from Longbourn-house to
Longbourn Hall, to reflect the elevated status
with which he expressed the hope that it
would, in the course of time, become
associated.
Regrettably, however, within less than a year of
the Collins family’s installation at Longbourn,
the Reverend Mr Collins sustained a minor
injury whilst engaged in clearing undergrowth
from a small wilderness beside a lawn in his
garden, the resulting wound from which most
unfortunately became infected. The rapid
progress of this infection caused him to
succumb soon afterwards, his resulting death
thus sadly depriving him of anything more than
the briefest period of enjoyment of his newly
acquired estate.
Mrs Bennet also died later that same year, and
Mrs Collins thereafter began to observe in
young Thomas the development of a strongly
studious character, carefully fostered by Miss
Mary Bennet’s solicitude towards him in her
combined role of cousin, mentor and librarian.
There gradually grew between these two
younger members of the household a firm
attachment, which eventually developed
beyond their previous cousinly affection, this
being confirmed by their marriage in 1833 and
the subsequent birth of a son, Timothy, in the
following year.
For above forty years since then, membership
of the Longbourn household underwent no
material alteration, until the recent death of
the elder Mrs Collins. This period has
nonetheless been punctuated by several notable
events associated with the family, perhaps the
most remarkable of which was the famous
Catherine (“Kitty”) Carter trial of 1862. Kitty
Carter was Mrs Mary Collins’s sister, and, in
defiance of social conventions, the elder Mrs
Collins allowed her to stay as a guest at
Longbourn Hall throughout the whole of that
protracted and scandalous affair.
The details of the case are so well known, even
today, that it would be superfluous to recount
them here; suffice it to say that the verdict
eventually obtained vindicated the faith that
both Mrs Collinses had placed in their relation,
who duly acknowledged her debt to them in an
autobiographical memoir, published later that
year, through which her name became known –
some might say, notorious – around the world.
Some nine years previously, a considerable
change had taken place at Longbourn, with the
purchase by the Great Northern Railway of
part of the estate’s farming land, for the
construction of the line through Meryton to
Ware. The substantial sum thereby realised
enabled the elder Mrs Collins to throw out a
new self-contained wing from the earlier house,
with the intention of entertaining friends and
family without interfering with the orderly
conduct of the rest of the household. The
generous nature of her year round hospitality
benefited in its turn from the improvements in
the means of travel provided by the new
railway, such that her visitors were now able to
reach Meryton from places as far afield as
Derbyshire and Yorkshire in a matter of hours,
rather than the days that had previously been
occupied in the completion of such journeys.
Mrs Collins retained few links with the Church
of England after the death of her husband,
although she did maintain friendships with
several of his former parishioners in and around
Hunsford for some time after her removal from
that part of the country. She was amused in her
later years to learn that the Rosings Estate, of
which the Hunsford rectory – where she spent
the first ten years of her married life – formed a
small part, had passed into the hands of the
nephew of her daughter-in-law, when it was
inherited by Sir Arthur Wickham de Bourgh,
Bart, upon the death of his first wife, Anne.
The concern that the elder Mrs Collins felt for
the education and welfare of her grandson, Mr
Timothy Collins, showed her to be
exceptionally solicitous on his behalf, and it
could be said with some certainty that his
successful parliamentary career, up to and
including his position in Mr Gladstone’s recent
administration, in the course of which he was
honoured with a knighthood, was the direct
result of the attention which she paid to his
upbringing. She also instilled in him the
passionate advocacy of many international
causes, foremost among which was that of
Italian unity, finding especial friendship and
fellow-feeling with the great Italian leader
Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was invited to
Longbourn Hall briefly on the occasion of his
visit to London in 1864.
Mrs Collins had always taken a great interest
not only in her own family, but also in those
both of her lifelong friend Mrs Elizabeth
Darcy, and of Mrs Darcy’s sister, the late Mrs
Jane Bingley. It was with great pleasure that she
saw her own younger brother, John Lucas,
marry Mr and Mrs Bingley’s daughter, also Jane,
in 1832, thereby sharing her own extended
family of nephews, nieces and cousins with
those of the former Bennet sisters.
Mrs Collins was widely renowned and loved for
the care she took to include all her extensive
family and friends in her regular invitations to
Longbourn, and for her careful remembrances
of birthdays and anniversaries of even the
youngest members of the family, extending to
the third and fourth generations, always with
thoughtful and appropriate gifts.
Mrs Collins travelled extensively, both in the
United Kingdom and abroad, often, especially
in her latter years, accompanied by her lifelong
friend Mrs Elizabeth Darcy. They completed
their last foreign journey together, to Italy, only
five years ago, at the height of the war in
France, which contributed not a little to the
excitements and discomforts of that journey.
Mrs Collins retained her health and her
faculties, save for gradually failing eyesight, to
the end of her long life, and many will recall the
occasion of her 90th birthday celebrations
which brought people from all over Britain, and
some from further afield, at which she herself
expressed a wish for it to be considered as, in
some measure, a way of bidding farewell to all
her many friends and relations.
The request expressed by Mrs Collins, that her
remains be removed from Meryton and
interred alongside those of her husband in the
churchyard at Hunsford, was complied with
shortly after her funeral, and a small family
gathering attended the interment ceremony as
a final farewell gesture to a well-loved and
notable figure who will be much missed, not
only here in Hertfordshire, but also much
further afield.
The Widow's Mite, 1876. Image @Morbid Anatomy
—————————————————————————————————
NOTES ON THE OBITUARY OF MRS CHARLOTTE COLLINS
AS SHOWN IN THE HERTFORDSHIRE GAZETTE, JUNE 1876
—————————————————————————————————
This Obituary Notice was discovered in the archives of the (fictional, of course) Hertfordshire Gazette, a long defunct weekly newspaper which circulated (as its title implies) mainly in Herfordshire, during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.
The piece was deliberately written without reference to any of the many continuations of P&P, even those attributed to Jane herself. I felt that a retrospective view from 63 years on would imply a much greater leap of the imagination than a mere ‘continuation’ of the novel would require.
Most of it needs no explanation for those familiar with the novel, though there are some things which might raise a question or two. Some of these are:
What was the ‘Kitty’ Carter trial?
The details are not recorded – but there WAS a notorious murder trial in 1862 – a nurse called Catherine Wilson was tried and found guilty of multiple murders for money; she was the last woman to be publicly hanged in London – some 25,000 people attended her execution. The ‘Kitty’ Carter trial was clearly much more ‘classy’ than that, involving scandal in very high places, and a very different outcome; it probably would not have involved murder. Carter, of course, was one of Wickham’s fellow officers.
Two of the marriages are with much older women. Is this not improbable?
Uncommon, but by no means improbable. It was certainly possible for an older woman to marry a younger man. I think the Mary/Thomas marriage entirely natural; and although the Arthur Wickham/Anne de Bourgh one might be a little more unlikely, Arthur would have inherited his father’s title (which was granted only a short time before his death in action in the First Affghan Campaign of 1837-39) when he was in his mid-20s and Anne was newly independent on the death of Lady Catherine.
What was Sir Timothy Collins’s post in the Gladstone cabinet of 1871-74?
He was Chairman of the Local Government Board, a new post created by Gladstone in 1871. He must have been promoted when he was quite young. In historical fact, the post of President of the Board went to Sir James Stansfeld, but I think Sir Timothy probably edged ahead of him at the time of the vote of no confidence in Stansfeld as Civil Lord of the Admiralty in 1864. Stansfeld, incidentally, was also a great supporter of Garibaldi.
Great Northern Railway – Meryton to Ware
No such line was actually built – the railway at Ware was built in 1843 by the Great Eastern Railway. However, the Great Northern did build a line from Welwyn to Hertford in 1858 which connected with the Ware line. The Great Northern main line would have made access from Yorkshire and Derbyshire to Meryton via Hitchin or Hatfield very much easier than it had previously been from about 1851 onwards.
Respectfully submitted by Andrew Capes. Your comments are most welcome.
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