Jane Austen's World

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.

 

—————————————————————————————————
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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