December 2011
60 posts
“No matter what I wear, no matter what I do,” said he, “I end up wet and shivering. When I walk in the street, people lean out their windows and dump buckets of water upon my head. In restaurants they douse me with the contents of their water glasses. When it rains my umbrellas always break and my raincoats are inevitably stolen.” … “My health has suffered as a result,” said he. “A perpetual cold, not to mention the sheer discomfort of being always wet.”
“To what do you attribute this situation?” said Tawny.
“To that infernal scene in the film, of course.”
“Describe it if you will, Mr. Darcy.”
“The actor who plays me bathes in the lake at Pemberley and emerges dripping wet, whereupon he meets with Elizabeth Bennet, much to their mutual embarrassment.”
Much sighing from the spectators. Answered by much banging of Lady Catherine’s gavel.
“A scene,” said Mr. Darcy, “which was not in the Creator’s original work. As if I would ever bathe in my lake without first ascertaining whether Pembereley had any visitors, let alone prance about my property in an alarming state of dishabille!”
“And is there nothing you can take to give you any relief?” said Tawny, who looked as if she was about to swoon.
Mr. Darcy blushed charmingly. “At home, of course, in private moments, I do find relief in not wearing any shirt at all.”
… Suddenly there was a loud thud as one lady spectator fell from her bench into a faint.
— from “Intolerable Stupidity” by Laurie Viera Rigler, as it appears in Jane Austen Made Me Do It
