Hi friends! Happy Friday! I’m excited to start my weekend by welcoming a new-to-me author to Austenesque Reviews. Maybe he is new-to-you? 🤗

Author Kelly Dean Jolley has previously published a few books with Meryton Press, but I believe his newest release – Darcy’s Struggle – is his first Austenesque work published. 🙌🏼

And guess what? Its release is tomorrow! 🥳 Happy Almost Release Day, Kelly!

Kelly is here to share an interview (between radio personality Will Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet) and an excerpt from Darcy’s Struggle.  😊

We hope you enjoy!

A continuation of the interview with Mr. Darcy on That’s Capital! (Part One can be found on From Pemberley to Milton:  Interview with Elizabeth Bennet.

POV (Darcy’s Struggle is in Darcy’s POV, this interview a glimpse into Elizabeth’s)

[Theme Music:  That’s Capital!]

Will Lucas:  Hello, everybody in Meryton!  We’re back!  We apologize for the technical difficulties and the radio silence during that succession of rain.  The wet and mud, plus a lightning strike on our tower, shut WMRY down for a few days.  Anyway — in our last interview we spoke to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, but the lightning interrupted our interview.  Mr. Darcy has since refused to continue his interview — he has letters of business to write, he says.  Wait til he discovers email!

But never fear, good people of Meryton, That’s Capital! has rallied.  Big Will Lucas will go on!

Today, we talk to the other half of Meryton’s most famous pair, Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

Before we begin, remember, you can listen to our show here on WMRY or on the podcast provider of your choice.

We’ll get started after a word from our sponsor.

[Thirty-second spot for Lydia’s La-La-Land, The Most Exciting Toys for Couples, “Where Fantasy Importunes Reality”]

[Theme Music segue]

Will:  Welcome back!  So — Miss Elizabeth, I must confess you do not have a face for radio.  Nor eyes, either.

Elizabeth (archly, after a moment):  Do I not?  That is a pleasant surprise. I was told once that I am not handsome enough to tempt a man to dance with me. I have since wondered if I would fare best where I am heard but not seen…

Will:  Ha!  — Ah, yes.  We spoke to Mr. Darcy about those words, his words.  Insofar as I could tell — he’s difficult to read, almost impassible — but he seemed embarrassed by them.

Elizabeth (thoughtfully):  Yes, I believe he was and still is.  He has apologized to me for them, now two or three times. I suspect another apology is likely before long. The words have proven to be more painful to him than to me.

Will:  Keeping his feet to the fire?

Elizabeth (chuckling lightly):  No, I have forgiven him the words.  At first, I thought what he said merely stung my vanity, and that I had difficulty in quieting it.  But (thoughtfully again, more serious) upon reconsideration, my reaction to the words was more complicated than that.

A disappointment I was unwilling to own stole over me when I heard him speak so…and, as hard as it is for me to admit it, that disappointment colored my interactions with him for a time.  The resentment and disappointment lingered. I was finally able to admit the resentment, but the disappointment…That took longer. I worried he would triumph over me.  Anyone having power over me makes me uncomfortable, especially when it is a man who puzzles me exceedingly.

Will:  Puzzles you?  But local intelligence claims that you are Meryton’s best at sketching characters.

Elizabeth (quiet for a long moment):  My reputation and my accomplishment in that art are more distant from each other than I knew.  I have prided myself on penetrating other people’s speech and action to arrive at their essences, much as Johnson does in that wonderful character sketch of Boswell himself in Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson…

Will:  Oh, Mr. Darcy mentioned Dr. Johnson too.

Elizabeth (with a quick, twinkling laugh):  You might say Mr. Darcy and I…bonded…over prose, Johnson’s prose.

Will (coughing involuntarily):  Truly? I would have thought Johnson was, well, an anaphrodisiac.

Elizabeth (still twinkling):  Very good, Mr. Lucas.  Mr. Darcy would approve of that word.  The more syllables the better. He favors words that are proportionate to his size.

[Will coughs again but Elizabeth continues without reacting]

We both value Johnson’s insight and honesty.  (Wistfully, softly) Johnson, like Mr. Darcy, can be feelingly eloquent about romance when he chooses. Poets, both.

(More loudly, briskly) Not that I regard poetry as the food of love, mind you.  Poetry is seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely, or by those not blessed already with a fine, stout love. The milk of poetry is only healthy for those who can and do bear the meat of prose.

Will (charmed and intimidated):  Um, yes, but to return to our topic.  I take it you attempted to sketch the character of Mr. Darcy?

Elizabeth:  Attempted, yes.

Will:  You were unsuccessful?

Elizabeth:  “Unsuccessful” seems wrong.  If I subtract 3 from 7 and arrive at 5, you can understand me as making a mistake, as subtracting unsuccessfully.  But if I arrive at 1000,  it seems worse than subtracting unsuccessfully, it seems I have no notion of what subtraction is. Mr. Darcy made me feel like that about character sketching, as if I have no notion…While I believe that Mr. Darcy is in essentials all that he ever was, I do not presume to penetrate to his essence. Yet, I am confident he is the best man I know.

Will:  And the two of you?

Elizabeth:  That is no one’s concern but ours.

Will:  But our listeners want to know where things stand between the two of you. How did it all begin, what was the middle like, and what’s happening now?  You said you bonded but that might mean many things. You said Mr. Darcy can be feelingly eloquent about romance but did not say whether that eloquence had any deep effect on you…

Elizabeth (guardedly): Mr. Darcy warned me that the people of this time have little sense of  mannerliness, and even less sense of the distinction between public and private.

Will:  But the private is only what has not yet been made public.

Elizabeth:  That, sir, is confused.  Do you sometimes profess opinions that are unsound, and not really your own?

Will: (exasperated) I’m a talk show host…

Elizabeth (noisily removing her headphones):  We are finished here.

Will:  Um…We’ll be right back. Maybe…

[Theme music segue to dead air]

~ Excerpt from Darcy’s Struggle ~

Chapter One: Mud and Vision

Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out
Even to a full disgrace.

— Shakespeare

Wednesday, November 13, 1811

Tolerable? 

The word sounded inside Fitzwilliam Darcy’s head as if it had been spoken there but not as the expression of any thought of his.

The word seemed alien, foreign. A scrap of dialogue from a play. Perhaps a tragedy.

Tolerable?

Again. Except this time, the word was inflected as a sneer—a sneer directed at him. At himself.

He felt a stab of something uncomfortable; it might have been dishonor.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet was standing upright in the entranceway to Netherfield, upright but ringed in mud. Rather, the hem of her skirt was a ring of mud, the dull mud on her skirt contrasted, not by shade, but by the shine of her lustrous brown hair and flashing dark eyes. Her color was high, almost rose-petal, and her chin was high, too. Miss Bingley’s stammering, outraged “Miss Elizabeth, how…how could you?” spoken at her sight of the muddy footprints leading from the door to the spot where Miss Elizabeth stood had caused the lift of the offender’s chin, the brightness in her eyes.

“I am sorry,” she said, not sounding as apologetic as Miss Bingley’s outrage demanded, “but I have come to care for (her eyes shifted quickly to Mr. Bingley and then back to his sister)…that is, to help care for—Jane.”

Darcy stared at Miss Elizabeth.

Miss Bingley began giving order to servants to help her with her boots and then suggested that they all—herself, her brother and Darcy, the assembled audience for the dirty, dramatic arrival—move into the parlor to allow Miss Elizabeth the privacy needed to take off her boots, have them cleaned, and to dab at her muddy skirts.

But Darcy did not move, not even when Miss Bingley carefully touched her hand to his arm. “Mr. Darcy, did you not hear me? We should allow Miss Eliza privacy.” She walked on, expecting him to follow.

Miss Elizabeth had already bent down to begin unbuckling her boots when she glanced up in obvious, surprised irritation at Miss Bingley’s “Eliza.” The name in Miss Bingley’s tone ranked her as a child. As childish. Inconsequential. A bumpkin.

Of nothing was Miss Bingley surer than her own sophistication, her accomplishments—that she was a London woman in full. She meant to call Darcy’s attention to the contrast between her and Miss Elizabeth. Town and country. Miss Bingley’s long wait for him to recognize her as his connubial destiny was beginning to wear on her; she had transparent hopes that this time in the country might finally awaken him to his future. Her future. She would be joined to Pemberley.

Darcy knew all this—and studiously ignored it.

What struck Darcy was the peculiar brightness of Miss Elizabeth’s eyes.

He had glimpsed it before but too briefly to recognize it for what it was.

***

The servants closed rank in front of Elizabeth, shielding her as she took off her boots and waiting to clean them.

And still Darcy stared.

Tolerable? 

Darcy took moral and religious matters seriously. That word, “seriously,” as used in William Law’s book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Moral and religious solemnities centered his understanding of himself.  He recalled a scripture he had heard recently at church in London, a story of Jesus and a man born blind. Jesus had spat on the ground, created mud, anointed the blind man’s eyes with it and sent him to wash the mud away in the pool of Siloam. The man did as he was told. He returned to Jesus whole, able to see.

The skirt of Miss Elizabeth’s green gown was muddy, but Darcy was the one who felt that he was seeing for the first time.

Mud and vision.

Elizabeth stood and handed her boots to one of the servants, but after she did, her eyes met Darcy’s. She arched an eyebrow, and the peculiar brightness of her eyes increased, becoming an open challenge, a challenge he did not understand.

He started. “Mr. Darcy,” Caroline said from behind him, “we must give Miss Eliza a moment!”

Darcy shook himself but stared at Miss Elizabeth one moment longer.

Her. Her?

Yes, Mr. Darcy – her! Seems like you are coming to your senses early. 👏🏼

I cannot wait to see if he acts on his intense admiration for Elizabeth Bennet. And I wonder how she will react if he does…! 🤭

~ Book Description ~

Brilliant, sensitive, and private, Fitzwilliam Darcy finds himself at the Meryton Assembly,
consciously troubled by recent events in Ramsgate and unconsciously troubled by himself.  He
insults Elizabeth Bennet, at whom he has only glanced.

It is not until she appears at Netherfield—full of life, skirted in mud, and eager to attend to her
sick sister—that Darcy truly looks at her. When he does, he knows she is the woman he has been
searching for, the elusive her of his heart. He falls for her completely…despite her apparent
unsuitability to be the Mistress of Pemberley and his half-hearted efforts to convince himself he
can live without her.

Shortly before Elizabeth leaves Netherfield, Darcy apologizes for what he said at the Assembly.
Will that apology and the depth of his sudden but durable feelings give him hope with Elizabeth?
Might George Wickham’s arrival frustrate his hopes, especially after Darcy blunders into a
marriage proposal to Elizabeth?

Romantic, reflective, and ironic, this is a story told from Darcy’s point of view, a story of the
struggle from intellect to heart—a deliberate character study and a delicate love story.

 

~~~

GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Meryton Press is generously giving away  1️⃣ ebook copy of Darcy’s Struggle in conjunction with Kelly’s visit today!  

 

To enter this giveaway leave a comment, a question, or some love for Kelly!

• This giveaway is open worldwide.  Thank you, Meryton Press!
• This giveaway ends June 21st!

Thank you to Janet Taylor, Meryton Press, and Kelly Dean Jolley for making this visit possible!