Mr. Gardiner Quotes

"If your master would marry, you might see more of him."
"Yes, sir; but I do not know when that will be. I do not know who is good enough for him."
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying, "It is very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think so."
"I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows him," replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was going pretty far; and she listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added, "I have never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 43. Elizabeth is taken aback as Mrs. Reynolds has high praise for her master Mr. Darcy in conversation with Mr. Gardiner. She tells him that she doesn’t know when Mr. Darcy might marry as she doesn’t know "who is good enough for him." She also claims to have never heard a cross word from him since he was a young child. Elizabeth is astonished as this has not been her experience with Darcy.

When she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace – when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly disdained…the difference, the change was so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her astonishment from being visible.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 44. Mr. Darcy has come to the inn to see Elizabeth and Jane and their aunt and uncle Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, bringing along his sister Georgiana. Elizabeth notices a great improvement in his behavior towards them and can hardly hide her astonishment. No longer is he the proud, stand-offish person that she found him in the past, but is civil and good mannered to her and Jane and the Gardiners, whom he previously looked down on as inferior.

"Do not give way to useless alarm," added he; "though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 47. Mr. Gardiner says this to his sister Mrs. Bennet, assuring the family that he would be in London the next day and would help Mr. Bennet "in every endeavour for recovering Lydia." There is consternation in the Bennet family when Lydia runs off to London with Wickham and Mr. Bennet goes there to track them down.

Yes, yes they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But there are two things that I want every much to know – one is, how much money your uncle has laid down, to bring it about; and the other is, how I am ever to pay him.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 49. Mr. Bennet responds to Mr. Gardiner’s letter stating that Wickham and Lydia have been persuaded to marry if Wickham has his debts paid and receives a small yearly stipend. Mr. Bennet suspects that Mr. Gardiner has already paid Wickham a great deal of his own money and he dislikes the idea of being indebted to his brother-in-law. Wickham is being paid to wed Lydia.

Well! I am so happy! In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! – how well it sounds! And she was only sixteen last June.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 49. After her previous regrets and lamentations about Lydia’s elopement and hurling invectives against the "villainous" Wickham, Mrs. Bennet is now in raptures over her daughter marrying him. Mrs. Bennet flip flops a lot between ecstacy over her schemes to get husbands for her daughters and lamentations about her personal suffering when these don’t work. After receiving her brother Mr. Gardiner’s letter that Lydia is to be wed to Wickham and her reputation saved, Mrs. Bennet suddenly reverses her opinion on the character of the fortune-hunting Wickham. Now he is fit to be her son-in-law. Here again the shallow, foolish, tiresome and vacuous Mrs. Bennet makes us laugh – but at her! The passage is another example of Austen’s fine use of ironic humor. Mr. Gardiner’s letter explains that Wickham will wed Lydia if Mr. Bennet pays Wickham a small sum of money annually to Wickham – the Bennets suspect that Mr. Gardiner has also already paid Wickham a good deal. The fuller quote of Mrs. Bennet’s reaction to this news from her brother: "It is all very right; who should do it but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have ever had anything from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy! In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well it sounds!"
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