novelsite Chapter 605: Story of Poor Sisters
Chapter 605: Story of Poor Sisters
Chapter 5. Story of Poor Sisters
Longbourne, Hertfordshire, South East England, March [-]
The ice and snow melted, the spring was bright, and the green countryside was filled with the smell of crops, grass blades and soil, as well as the sound of croaking ducks.
The British countryside at the end of the eighteenth century always exudes a leisurely and lazy atmosphere.
Here, no one asks you to work overtime until late at night, and you don’t have to squeeze the bus and subway like sardine cans every day, and you don’t have the phone ringing from time to time and the ensuing yelling from the boss, or the annoying real estate. Selling advertisements...there will also be no choking car exhaust and noisy square dance music, and there will be singing birds and flowers everywhere, beautiful scenery, lush greenery, and the humid air is so fresh...
However, our incomprehensible traveler Elizabeth.Miss Bennet still infinitely misses the turbid air and noisy reinforced concrete forest in her hometown; she misses the small rental house where the convenience store is just outside the door and online shopping can be done while sitting on the bed; she misses her Apple computer , smartphones and small electric cars, as well as microwave ovens, washing machines, refrigerators, hot water bottles and solar water heaters...
Once, she was also a literary young woman obsessed with Western classical literature, looking forward to those dances, love affairs and country estates.
Now, ever since she traveled, she began to firmly believe that every girl who traveled to the past was an angel with broken wings in her previous life!
This kind of world has no electricity, no Internet, no running water, and even pencils and toilet paper have not been invented. I really can't afford it!
(It’s hard for many people to imagine that Westerners didn’t start using toilet paper until the late nineteenth century. The Americans were the first to use toilet paper, and it was popularized throughout Europe just before World War I. Gentlemen and ladies before it probably didn’t wipe their asses at all ——This is the real situation observed by early Chinese students studying in the Soviet Union. Their Maozi classmates seldom wiped their buttocks after defecating, and the few who used toilet paper were considered extravagant and delicate.)
Narrowing her eyes, the exhausted Elizabeth sighed, looked up at the brilliant sun, the dazzling brilliance made the corners of her eyes a little sour... Then, resigned to her fate, she pushed the cart full of firewood and food again, and continued Walking on a muddy path that has just had a spring rain.
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——In the modern society after the industrial revolution, there are countless literary works praising the pastoral life in the countryside.Those poets and writers spared no effort to eulogize the beauty of rural life and criticize the depravity and hustle and bustle of the city, claiming that with the disappearance of the old pastoral life, the simplicity, tranquility, spirituality and human touch of the past are all gone. Disappeared without a trace, and even human morality is not as good as it used to be.
However, most of this rosy nostalgic trend of thought comes from the upper class who are far away from the countryside, at least the petty bourgeoisie who have no worries about food and clothing.While criticizing the debauchery of urban life for degrading people's morals, they have never used the stinky squat toilets in the remote countryside, and at best they have only driven a few times to visit scenic spots.If these guys really came to the English countryside at the end of the eighteenth century, before the industrial revolution fully started, they probably wouldn't be able to stay for a week at all, and they would try their best to escape back to the city.
For example, at this very moment, in Elizabeth.Not far from Miss Bennet is a typical farm house in Longbourne Village.This family is not the poorest tenant farmer, but a self-cultivator that is rare in England after the enclosure movement. It is said that it is a dilapidated country gentleman. As a result, they lost almost all their property, and could only live on the last remaining piece of land farming. This is an important negative example for the gentlemen in the village to educate their children, so Elizabeth knew more about their family's situation... But Even so, their family conditions are much better than those of tenants who need to rent land.
So, what is the living situation of such a rich peasant family?It can be seen from Elizabeth's vision at this time: in an old brick house covered with moss, a family of four is sitting around the fireplace.Father read the Bible aloud with great interest, and mother prepared beef stew for everyone.In the cradle the little brother, not yet weaned, cried loudly.The eldest scooped milk from the clay jug and poured it into everyone's glasses at the table.There's no car noise outside, and no ear-piercing pop or hell rock.There is absolutely no trace of dioxins or other industrial additives in milk freshly squeezed from a cow.
Everything is so green, simple and harmonious, peaceful and serene.It's like the paradise imagined by Greenpeace environmentalists.
It's a pity that if you really go into their homes and collect information carefully with the observation skills of Sherlock Holmes, you will find a lot of troubles hidden under the surface of daily life: for example, although the family has an annual income of more than 50 A rich peasant in sterling, but his father who is reading the Bible still coughs hard because of the smoke from the firewood.If he continues to cough like this, he will suffer from bronchitis sooner or later, and die at the age of four or fifty at most, which was normal in England at the time.The average life expectancy of urban residents is only a little over 30 years old.
Next, the baby in the cradle was crying, probably because he had smallpox or some other untreatable common infant disease, and he was going to die in a short time--babies die at an astonishingly high rate in this day and age, Banner It is God's blessing that all the five special sisters can grow up.
The mother was then stroking her belly while cooking, suffering from stomach pains.But even if she is willing to spend money to see a doctor, in England at the end of the [-]th century, the only effective medicine that doctors could prescribe for her is probably opium cream... The beef stew on the table tasted tasteless and hard to chew There were no other dishes on the table except beef and potatoes, because there were no fruits and fresh vegetables in season.
It’s okay during the day, but at night, because candles are too expensive, most of the frugal working people can only look at things by the fire. As a result, because of the poor light, they hurt their eyes without reading a few books-don’t think that they are in the campfire. What a romantic thing to read next to you!None of their family members had seen an opera, painted an oil painting, or heard a complete piano performance, and their mother was simply illiterate.The reason why the father and eldest son of this family can still read is because they went to the cheapest missionary school for several years, but apart from being able to read the Bible, they don’t even seem to have mastered basic multiplication and division.
Their home is only 25 miles away from the capital, London, but only the father of the whole family has traveled to the city of London once by coach, and the round-trip travel expenses have cost him a month's income.Others were never more than ten miles from home.Everyone in the family had linen shirts and woolen coats adequate for the cold, but all were infested with lice in the damp weather.There is no bed at home, but a straw mat laid on the ground is used instead.
These were the general living conditions of working families in the British countryside at the end of the eighteenth century, and they are enough to strike fear into the eyes of any modern man.
Of course, the above is the life of the working people, and as the ladies of the squire's family, the five Bennet sisters would not have lived such a life in the first place.
In England at the end of the eighteenth century, the so-called squires generally referred to those who could live well only on the profits of their ancestral properties and never worked.They are neither capitalists, nor priests, officials, or politicians, but a thoroughly exploiting class.They don't do any work every day, and even regard work as a shame. They just settle their bills before the four times a year. They usually drink tea, dance, socialize, eat, drink, read, Gambling... is an out-and-out social parasite.
At that time, most of the British squires were landlords, but because Great Britain was not very suitable for agricultural development, and the fertile land in the country was limited, other squires who later made a fortune could not buy suitable land, so they exchanged their ancestral property for cash and deposited it in the bank. You can eat interest in it, or some more reliable bonds, funds, stocks, etc., relying on annual profits and dividends to live.At the end of the eighteenth century, each acre of land in England earned about one pound per year on average, while the interest rates of banks, stocks, funds, bonds, etc. were roughly 5.00% to [-]%, while stocks and bonds with higher interest rates It is usually a venture capital investment, and it is likely to lose everything. People with cautious personalities dare not easily bet their wealth on it.
Among the Bennet family, Mr. Bennet has an annual land rent income of 2000 pounds, which means that he owns at least [-] acres of real estate.His wife's dowry is [-] pounds, and the annual interest in the bank is calculated at [-]%, which is [-] pounds. This means that the entire annual income of the whole family is [-] and [-] pounds when they do not work at all.At that time, it was definitely within the top [-] on the list of the wealthiest people in the UK. You know, at that time, it was still far from the Victorian era when the British Empire was at its peak. There were only [-] households in the UK with an annual income of [-] pounds. above, and there are only [-] households with an annual income of more than [-] pounds.Several earls with hereditary lands earned less than a thousand pounds a year.
Moreover, unlike those landlords and local tyrants in China who have to hire a large number of henchmen and go to the countryside every year to find tenants to collect rent, British landlords like Mr. Bennet are smarter and more lazy, and they don’t even manage their own land. It is to sign the contract and subcontract it to an agent, or an agricultural capitalist, thus passing on all the troubles and risks-even if the contractor fails to manage well and goes bankrupt, Mr. Bennet can still ask the guarantor for the account, and then send The land is subcontracted to the next agricultural capitalist.If the contractor manages well and makes huge profits, then Mr. Bennet can take the opportunity to raise the price when the contract expires and the other party renews the lease, and increase the land rent to share the benefits... It is simply a small Li Ka-shing...
Therefore, according to Elizabeth's initial thoughts, they have so much property, and their living conditions will not be too miserable.
But unfortunately, she forgot an important premise: All of the above is the property of the Bennets, not their five sisters.
In fact, not to mention Mr. Bennet's real estate, even Mrs. Bennet's dowry of [-] pounds in the bank, they can't use it!
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First of all, from a legal point of view, the Bennets are currently missing.
Secondly, neither of the Bennets left a will, stipulating how the family property should be arranged after they disappeared or died.
According to the British practice at this time, if there is no conclusive evidence, then the average person must be missing for seven years before being declared dead.
——The reason why the time from disappearance to declaration of death was set so long was because at that time, the British Empire was in the pioneering stage of colonizing the world, and countless British men were setting sail in every corner of the world.At that time, the communication conditions were relatively backward, there was no radio, and God knows if the letter could be delivered.It is common for someone to go to sea for several years without hearing from his family.If such legislation were not made, it would frequently happen that some unlucky captain, officer, or merchant, returning from a long and difficult voyage from India, Africa, or America, found himself inexplicably pronounced dead, and his wife driven into Monastery, and the embarrassing thing about the property being inherited by some distant relative...
In this way, the property of the Bennet couple is temporarily frozen, and the five Bennet sisters must find a way to go to court to apply for certification that their "parents" are dead-but they will be regarded as unfilial daughters by the world, and they There are no connections, and it may not be successful; or you have to be self-reliant.
After biting the bullet and going to Meryton, a nearby town, and consulting Uncle Philip, a lawyer, the time-traveling version of the five Bennet sisters had to give up their previous plan for the time being, and they were not very willing to seek refuge with their relatives. ——Mainly because they changed their souls, they were somewhat guilty, and worried that they would show their feet.Therefore, they can only rely on the cash stored at home, and deal with it for a period of time.
Then, the time-travel version of the five Bennet sisters rummaged at home, searched the small vault in Mr. Bennet's study, broke open Mrs. Bennet's money box, and collected all the pocket money of the five of them. In the end, I only managed to scrape together more than 400 pounds... Although this figure seems not small, if you want to continue to support the family with a dozen servants, a carriage and several horses, you really can't last long.
—At that time, it cost an average of twenty pounds a year to hire a maid, and the net worth of gardeners, grooms and cooks was even more expensive.As for the cost of raising horses, it is generally much higher than raising people: for example, in the army, the daily maintenance cost of a cavalry is at least five times that of an infantry.
So, starting two months ago, the five Bennet sisters dismissed the housekeeper and servants, and since then they have not relied on others to serve them and are self-reliant-although they are still sitting and eating, they just cook, wash and clean by themselves every day. Let them can't help but cry endlessly...