For if they don’t ask, but just presume, it takes nerve and guts to get them to understand, let alone accept, a refusal. This is the dilemma of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, the most enchanting of Jane Austen’s heroines for her quicksilver gaiety and her loving heart. Neither of these qualities is to be detected in her would-be husband Mr Collins, like St John Rivers a creepy clergyman of nauseous piety and hypocritical cant.

This prize nerd is due to inherit the Bennet estate as the nearest male heir. In a conceited plan to make up to Elizabeth and her sisters for this naked act of male chauvinist highway robbery, Mr Collins has decided to make one of them his wife. Pick a sister, any sister, is his system — he’s not particular.

Nothing on earth could make him even tolerable in Elizabeth’s eyes. She has been enjoying him as a joke, but now she finds to her horror that the joke’s on her. She can’t bear him. But how to give him the bum’s rush?

Elizabeth tries various methods of refusing him, but Mr Collins has somehow absorbed from the pulp fiction of his day the idea that in True Romance the lady always refuses the man she secretly intends to accept at least six times. And then there’s Mr Collins‘ ace in the hole, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He has been so puffed up by the patronage of this small-time noblewoman, to whom he toadies shamelessly for advancement, that it never occurs to him that a lesser gentlewoman could find him unattractive.

All this emerges clearly from his proposal, a parade of such bare-faced ego-mania that Elizabeth might just as well not be present at all. Mr Collins makes love to himself, and at the end of his proposal is not at all surprised to find himself accepted, all over bar the shouting:

Almost as soon as 1 entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife.

Felicitous touch that `selecting’, eh? Makes lovely Lizzie sound like a box of chocs or a piece of fruit. But Mr Collins is very hot on the mot juste, especially of the heavyweight Latin variety, as follows:

Now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be complied with, also that one thousand pounds in the four per cents which will not be yours till after your mother’s decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent,. and you may be sure that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.’

WHEN WE ARE MARRIED! Poor Elizabeth sat transfixed somewhere between horror and hysteria as the juggernaut of Mr Collins‘ proposal lumbered on. Now, however, it is about to run her down. As Jane Austen notes with her unequalled gift for dry understatement, ‘it was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now’:

`You are too hasty, sir,’ she cried. ‘You forget I have made no answer. I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to decline them . .

`You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin,’ replied Mr Collins, ‘that your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy of your acceptance, or that the establishment 1 can offer would be any other than highly desirable. Nor do I reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as the least of the advantages in my power to offer. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females. I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of being acceptable.’

Nothing less than the row that ensues between Elizabeth’s mother and her father, one violently for and the other as violently against Mr Collins, will do to give him the message that Elizabeth will not have him. But he shows the strength of his ‘love’ for her by bouncing smartly into the arms of a woman who will. Within three days the engagement is announced — between himself and Lady Catherine de Bourgh!

Have you ever thought that Jane Austen might have been exaggerating the pomposity and self-importance of Mr Collins? Then look at this real-life proposal from the same period. It was made in 1808 by an earnest young barrister with the unfortunate name of Thomas Trollope, to Fanny, the sister of his friend Henry Milton. Neither his hilarious handle, nor his ponderous approach, nor the shortness of their acquaintance (three months) prevented her from accepting him. The fact that she was then 28, in an era when the age of consent was 12and many girls were old married women at 15, may have had something to do with it.

So could Miss Fanny have been pleased to receive this epistle?

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