Mr Bennet In Bath - Charles Nevin

MR BENNET IN BATH

Ladies and gentlemen, admirers of Jane and lovers of literature, I give you the true hero of Pride and Prejudice - and of possibly the entire Austen canon - Mr Bennet! For who else can compare with the Sage Seer of Longbourn, that Witty King of Herts, that most rueful of husbands, fathers and philosophers?

No character from the pen of Miss Austen is a mere cypher or convenient foil. Even the haughty stuff shirts and dissembling charmers have beguiling depths. But for rueful complexities, admirable strengths and regretful weaknesses, Mr Bennet is surely as alone as he likes to be in his library. I have long been his admirer, mostly for the delicious wit, but it wasn’t until I decided to star him in a short story that I fully appreciated as rounded a character as you will encounter in fiction, portrayed by Jane with an affection that triumphantly survives her beady acknowledgement of his failings. When the great crisis of Lydia and Wickham erupts it is the Austen wizardry to make his feebleness not only a surprise, but also to make us feel sorry for him. And how much more predictable it would have been to transform him into the hero of the hour!

Not for the first time you wonder how close the Reverend George Austen is to Mr Bennet. And how being a father of a certain type yourself fosters your affection. Whatever, I decided that he could certainly do with a bit more fun, and that there was no finer place to give it to him than Bath, where he has arrived - reluctantly, obviously - for a stay with his wife and daughters. But first there is my account of his first visit, as a young man, which had at least one highly significant consequence. Among the characters he encounters are Dr Johnson, James Boswell and that notorious Bath highwayman, Sixteen String Jack Rann.

From there we move to his present day, and an escape from the back window of the house - unsurprisingly in Gay Street - and back down to the famous Pelican inn, which stood where now the Hilton Hotel stands in all its not universally praised modernity. Obviously I cannot give too much away, but he does have a narrow escape from a fate even worse than having to make small talk with Fitzwilliam Darcy, take tea a deux with Lady Catherine de Bourg, or witness Mr Collins meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury. I must also confess to another impudence: I have given Mr Bennet a first name! Gordon and Alan had their merits, but in the end I settled on Anthony, for the euphony. So, apologies all round to all; but I also like to imagine the perceptible uplift of Mrs Bennet’s husband's eyebrows at these liberties. And Miss Austen’s, together with, I hope, the trace of a smile.

Charles Nevin is an award-winning journalist, national newspaper columnist, author and humorist.

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