A cad and a rake, or just misunderstood?

However, Wickham did extort the equivalent of more than one million dollars from Mr Darcy, which he gambled and otherwise wasted away. He also lied to anyone who would listen about his dealings with the gentleman. When the militia moved to Brighton, Wickham left with another mountain of debt, having conned his way into credit agreements with various traders.

Mr Wickham’s decision to elope with Lydia was a strange one. The Bennets have no money, so his motivation could not have been financial. He had no intention of marrying Lydia, it is said, so perhaps he was being led purely by his sexual desire. If so, then why run off with a gentleman’s daughter? Less troublesome encounters would surely have been possible for an officer stationed in a famous ‘gay bathing place’ like Brighton?

In any case, at the end of the book, where Jane Austen describes the future of Lydia and Mr Wickham, there is little to redeem his character. They stay together of course, but in time become bored with one another. They live a restless life, never able to live to their means and dependent on the charity of Mrs Elizabeth Darcy.

So while it’s a nice idea in Lost in Austen, in the novel the cracks of ambiguity in Wickham’s moral character are very slight indeed. I do find his elopement with Lydia a little hard to rationalize, but overall he’s pretty much a straightforward 19th Century villain – a superficially charming, yet amoral hedonist.

Are you willing to believe, like Jane, that Mr Wickham ‘is not so undeserving’ as we might have thought. Or is he, as we always believed, in possession of ‘neither integrity or honour?’

Lizzy

Wickham asked a high price to marry Lydia

Here are some thoughts, based on 1997 figures from critic Edward Copeland, about the sums that were thrown at Mr Wickham at various points in Pride and Prejudice. Copeland estimates that a pound in Pride and Prejudice was equivalent to about 80 US dollars today. This gives quite an insight into the staggering sums that were involved in Darcy’s fattening of Wickham’s wallet.

Wickham inherited 1,000 pounds from Fitzwilliam Darcy’s father, which would have been about 80,000 dollars. After abandoning his plan to join the clergy, Wickham decided to take up a career in law. He therefore received another 3,000 pounds from Mr Darcy to pursue his studies – a whopping 240,000 dollars! After three years, Wickham was no closer to the legal profession, and so approached Darcy for another cash handout.

Mr Darcy refused, presumably on the grounds that 320,000 dollars should have gotten Wickham a little further in life. Mr Wickham then attempted to elope with Georgiana Darcy in the hope of securing her fortune of 30,000 Pride-and-Prejudice-pounds. This would be around 2.4 million dollars today! In this scheme, he was fortunately unsuccessful.

When Lydia and Wickham eloped to London, Wickham stood to inherit her paltry sum of 40 pounds a year, which is just 3,200 dollars (based on the interest from her 80,000 inheritance, which would have been held in a government bond.) Of course, this is why he had no intention of marrying Lydia – until Darcy arrived and offered him more money.

At this point, Darcy gave Wickham 1,000 Pride-and-Prejudice-pounds – around 80,000 dollars – to settle his debts. He bought Wickham’s commission at a further 450 pounds, or 36,000 dollars. Mr Bennet believes that Wickham must have demanded no less than 10,000 pounds to marry his youngest daughter, so in total Wickham probably received the equivalent of 800,000 dollars as a wedding gift!

Altogether then, Wickham managed to scrounge the equivalent of over one million dollars from Mr. Darcy during the course of Pride and Prejudice. At the end of the novel, Jane Austen also mentions that Lizzy continued to send George and Lydia Wickham money, saving it through ‘economy in her own private expenses.’ The Wickhams were, it seems, never able to live according to their means:

It had always been evident to [Elizabeth] that such an income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or [Elizabeth] were sure of being applied to for some little assistance towards discharging their bills.

The modern equivalents only provide a rough sketch of course and other estimates have been made. Copeland believes his own figures may even be conservative, and will be especially so since 12 years have passed since his analysis. In any case, it certainly heightens the drama of the story to have a rough idea of how much money was involved.