I want to think about how much planning—what level of scheming—must have gone into Wickham’s plot with Miss Younge to get to Miss Darcy. Because once you begin considering it, it becomes a dark conspiracy, indeed. 

The common descriptions of what happened between Wickham and Georgiana almost always underplay the truth. Perhaps because there is so much in Mr. Darcy’s letter that it’s easy to miss. Not to mention that without knowledge of the basic laws around marriage at the time, it’s impossible to grasp. (And some of the adaptations have further obscured things.)

About half of the following mini-descriptions of Mr. Wickham’s sins are from podcasts—which I’d planned on naming and linking to—before I thought better of it. I reconsidered because I like them all and don’t want to come across as criticizing them for not thinking about the situation any more than I had until listening to them helped jar me into it.

Some of those descriptions:

• “to convince [Georgiana] of his love in order to get her dowry”
• “to encourage an underage heiress to elope” 
• “courting Darcy’s sister” 
• “attempt to seduce a 15-year old” 
• “tried to persuade her to elope” 
• “pursued Miss Darcy” 

And although some of those descriptions were given in the context of extreme censure of Wickham, and all were critical, none of them accurately describe the situation. 

We’re given all the details necessary to understand how evil Wickham’s plan was, but no character specifically reflects on those details or puts a name to it. No one comes straight out and calls it what it was: a conspiracy.

“His revenge would have been complete, indeed.”

Let’s just be clear: an elopement meant the automatic and immediate transfer of all a woman’s wealth into the hands of the husband.

From a practical sense, what an elopement would mean for Georgiana is that every penny of her fortune—at least the equivalent of £2.3 million today (but really much more because an inflation calculator doesn’t come close to encompassing the true value)—would legally belong to Wickham the moment they married. Without all the legal wrangling before the wedding, the money would be Wickham’s to spend as he saw fit. And there is nothing that Mr. Darcy could do to keep Georgiana’s money from her, and therefore from Wickham. Once the vows were exchanged it would be a done deal. That money was Georgiana’s. If there was no legal agreement before the wedding, after the wedding Georgiana’s fortune would cease to be Georgiana’s. 

It would be Wickham’s. 

📍 (A good explanation of marriage settlements from Ellen at Reading Jane Austen.)

“By her connivance and aid”: Mrs. Younge

Although most people know this and isn’t necessarily important, it’s worth stating up front: Mrs. Younge may not have ever been married, because all governesses were referred to as “Mrs.” 

…there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived…

THE BIG QUESTION: Why was Mrs. Younge working as a governess in the first place?

We know that there was a prior acquaintance between Wickham and Mrs. Younge, but we also know that Mrs. Younge wasn’t your normal governess. At least, she certainly doesn’t seem to have needed the money in the way one would expect a governess to need money. 

Backing up a little, since we don’t have good information before the 1841 census, it’s hard to tell exactly how much a governess for a family like the Darcys would be paid in the early 1800’s, but besides room and board it wasn’t much, and we do know that a governess’ salary was usually less than a cook or lady’s maid. 

Yet Mrs. Younge was able to buy “a large house” in a nice part of London immediately after her plot with Wickham was foiled and she was discharged from her post. And since we know that she didn’t take advantage of a low-interest rate deal at her local lender, that means that she had the money to buy “a large house” while she was working as Georgiana’s governess. 

Which is weird, right?

A large house in Edward Street

Crossing Oxford Street, Holles Street leads us into Cavendish Square, which is spacious and well built, having a circular shrubbery, containing a gilt equestrian statue of William Duke of Cumberland enclosed in its centre. Wigmore Street branches off from the north-west angle of this square; it is a well built street inhabited by persons of the first fashion; in continuation of this is Edward Street from which a short avenue leads into Manchester Square.

“A Topographical and Statistical description of the County of Middlesex, etc” (1810) by George Alexander Cooke (Link to archive.org digitized copy)

Mrs. Younge was letting out lodgings in the Edward Street house “to maintain herself” when Lydia and Wickham were squirreled away in London—so she wasn’t fabulously wealthy—but neither was she completely impoverished. She didn’t gather up her savings from her time as Miss Darcy’s governess and use it to take “a large house in Edward Street,” in the neighborhood of Hyde Park and Cavendish Square.

Mr. Wickham and Mrs. Younge were tight before she became Miss Darcy’s governess.

Together they tried to get Georgiana to elope with Wickham so he could get her fortune. And I am going to guess that Mrs. Younge would get something out of this, as well. Although we aren’t told that explicitly, we know that Mrs. Younge isn’t the type to even give information away for free, since she hustles some cash from Darcy to tell him where Wickham and Lydia are staying. I think it’s reasonable, then, to infer that she wasn’t chaperoning and manipulating a rich teenager into eloping with her pal Wickham purely out of the generosity of her heart.

We cannot be certain, but given the information we have…

The most likely scenario from everything Austen tells us is that one of the two, probably Wickham, found out about the governess job and saw an opportunity. Then Mrs. Younge applied for the position with the sole purpose of conspiring to steal — I’m going to call it stealing — Miss Darcy’s fortune. 

“I wish I could call her amiable. It gives me pain to speak ill of a Darcy; but she is too much like her brother,—very, very proud. As a child, she was affectionate and pleasing, and extremely fond of me; and I have devoted hours and hours to her amusement. But she is nothing to me now. She is a handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen, and, I understand, highly accomplished. Since her father’s death her home has been London, where a lady lives with her, and superintends her education.”

At the very least, Wickham plotted with the woman who was entrusted with Georgiana’s care to trick her into marrying him by pretending to be in love with her. Playing on emotions she had felt for him as a child. As a younger child, because she was still a child when Wickham plotted to ruin her life, break her heart, and steal her fortune. 

And then he called her proud.

“…you, yourself, when last at Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man who had behaved with such forbearance and liberality towards him. And there are other circumstances which I am not at liberty—which it is not worth while to relate; but his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From what he said of Miss Darcy, I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud, reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found her.”

Don’t call it pursuit. Call it what it is, and call Wickham what he is.

Wickham is a sociopath.

(Although he’s a pretty generic villain, and in truth, I feel much more antipathy towards Mr. Collins than I do Mr. Wickham.)

What Elizabeth points out in the recap with Mr and Mrs Gardiner in the carriage ride back to Longbourn is the final nail in Wickham’s character. Aside from the fact of what must have been a planned-out conspiracy to fool and entrap a 15-year old by the cruelest means imaginable, just months after doing this to Georgiana and her brother—whom I do believe Wickham was motivated at least in part by the desire to exact a petty, spiteful revenge against—Wickham goes to an area where Darcy is known and slanders Darcy’s character in the lowest way, and even says horrible things about the 15-year old whom he conspired against and whose heart he broke. Elizabeth specifically names these transgressions of slandering Mr. Darcy and Georgiana as what she finds particularly abhorrent. Wickham has, by objective evidence, been completely awful to them both. Darcy paid him handsomely, then paid off his debts after he fled them, and had the nerve to hold him to his agreement. But Georgiana had been nothing but a victim of Wickham’s and Miss Younge’s scheme. Wickham endeavoring to ruin both their characters in the eyes of everyone he possibly could, so wholly unjustly and unnecessarily, makes him quite the bastard.

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While working on some Lewisohn/Beatles stuff, I’ve been chilling by transferring some of my random notes into a collective Pride and Prejudice post of points and questions, and meant to add this to it, but ended up deciding it was long enough to put in a separate post.