The Tenth Anniversary of The Bennet Wardrobe Series by Don Jacobson

carolinecartieraut

17 hours ago

16 min read

Hello, Dear Readers!

Today, I am delighted to welcome Don Jacobson to the blog! Let's take a look at the description of "The Bennet Wardrobe!"

Synopsis:

The Greatest Love in a Universe Ruled by the Most Ardent Affection

The Bennet Wardrobe Series is an alternate history that treats Jane Austen’s immortal characters as living, breathing people. In this universe, Pride and Prejudice is not fiction but rather biography. Longbourn’s Bennets live and love across 300 years because a mystical device—The Bennet Wardrobe—blesses them, letting them step into their future to learn what they must.

Yet, as the Bennets move through the series, a greater purpose begins to appear. A universal balance—the greatest love in history—has been disturbed. They must set matters right before anyone can safely find their way home. Every Bennet, from the parents to the youngest, plays their part in the matchless drama leading to the towering conclusion.

The Bennet Wardrobe Series Tenth Anniversary e-book set combines eight volumes into one convenient collection, letting readers follow the epic tale from its earliest days through the twenty-first century. Each book has been refreshed and illustrated with both recent and classic covers, period artwork, and photographs. Electronic endnotes illuminate facts and the authorial process along with some editorial comments. 760,000 words for binge readers to keep track of.

CC: If you have ever wondered what might happen if the Bennet family of Pride and Prejudice were given the opportunity to step beyond their own time and discover the world that awaits them, then you will want to know about Don's remarkable Bennet Wardrobe series.

Blending Jane Austen's beloved characters with time travel, historical adventure, romance, and a touch of the extraordinary, Don has created an imaginative and wonderfully ambitious saga that carries the Bennet family far beyond the familiar world of Longbourn. Along the way, characters who were often overlooked in the original novel are given opportunities to grow, discover their own strengths, and play their parts in a much larger story.

The series has clearly captured the admiration of fellow Austenesque authors. Lory Lilian praises its complexity and originality, while Joana Starnes describes it as a captivating journey through history, filled with fascinating detail and much-loved characters. Nicole Clarkston particularly applauds the intricate storytelling that brings together events spanning generations.

Now, celebrating ten years since the series began, Don has brought all eight volumes together in an impressive anniversary collection, offering readers the opportunity to experience this extraordinary adventure from beginning to end.

CC: Please join me in welcoming Don Jacobson, who is here today to share his guest post with us! Don, what can you tell us about "The Bennet Wardrobe?"

DJ: I have been reading Austenesque fiction since late 2013. Over time, I have probably read over 1,500 (or more) Pride and Prejudice variations. Saying I have immersed myself in the genre would be accurate.

In late 2014, I was going through a very difficult time as my 88-year-old mother began to fail. During that “last trip to see Mom,” my family had flown to Connecticut to attend her at the nursing home. She was in and out of reality. She knew who we were—at times—and who the kids were—at times. There were moments, though, when she would look at our then 27-year-old son and call him by my name.

My mother, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, was unstuck in time.

And I think that disturbed me on a subconscious level.

Later that same night, my brain threw up something quite Austenesque. ’Twas a letter Caroline Bingley had written to her sister-in-law, Jane, in 1816 apologizing for all that she had done to impede Jane and Charles’ relationship. Her next step, leaving Britain for the United States, showed that Caroline was finally taking agency over her own life.

That was the first appearance of the Bennet Wardrobe Universe…a place where characters—Bennets all—could realize their potentials after the double wedding. The Wardrobe—and its time-bending potential—did not exist as of yet. That came later, after I began asking how the characters could move beyond the stereotypes Austen made so easy to hold on to: pedantic Mary, coughing Kitty, lascivious Lydia, nervous Fanny, indolent Thomas.

I deeply wished to discover what sorts of people they could become if they were allowed to learn what they needed. To me, the key problem was that they seemed constrained by their timeline. Might they find their path to fulfillment, both within and outside the accepted Regency timeline?

In mid-2015, the Bennet Wardrobe coalesced with the writing of Miss Bennet’s First Christmas and the beginning of The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey. Now, those of the Bennet bloodline could move past the constraints imposed by the end of Pride and Prejudice. I found it best to suspend my own disbelief and start from the premise that the Bennet Wardrobe—and the temporal context Jane Austen created—actually existed.

To help readers join me on this trip, I wrote a mock research article, found at the beginning of the first Volume of the Bennet Wardrobe: The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey. I placed the Bennet Wardrobe alongside other forms of British Magical Transport: J.K. Rowling’s flue network, C.S. Lewis’ wardrobes, and Susanna Clarke’s King’s roads. (See excerpt below)

However, I recoiled from the accepted tropes of time travel that wound their way into JAFF. Auto accidents, blows to the head, and fever dreams/deliria did not satisfy me. In fact, they smacked of artifices designed to tell the same ODC story differently.

In the Wardrobe’s universe, characters from Pride and Prejudice know the Wardrobe’s potential and choose whether to use it. They also know the Wardrobe is not an omnibus. A Bennet cannot “hop aboard” the Wardrobe and insist on being taken to 1841 or 1941. Instead, the Wardrobe determines the Bennet’s true needs and sends each person to the point in time where they need to learn what they need to learn.

Thus, seventeen-year-old Kitty Bennet, furious at her father’s decision to send her to school in Cornwall, slammed her hands onto the Wardrobe’s marquetry doors. An empowering thought coursed through her mind: I wish they were dead! Anywhere but Cornwall! Anywhere but here!

The Wardrobe sent her to 1886, when everyone in her generation was long gone. Well, almost everyone…

Savvy readers will now say, “Ah-hah! There were accidental uses of the Wardrobe!” Yes, to be sure. However, I was sure the Wardrobe wouldn't send Elizabeth, Kitty, or Lydia to a where/when that wouldn't serve a purpose. In the process, various Bennets—but most importantly, the younger three Bennet daughters—become facilitators in the Wardrobe’s ultimate design, a development that grows as the reader progresses through the series.

Readers will encounter historical figures and characters from other works of fiction throughout the books. I believe that imagining characters and their foibles brings them into reality. This is known as solipsism, a technique Robert A. Heinlein, a master of speculative fiction, used.

By writing Pride and Prejudice, Miss Austen called into existence the universe in which, I like to believe, all subsequent Regency/Napoleonic/Victorian works are really portrayals of a real world. I like to believe they lived in the same world as the Darcys, Bennets, and Bingleys, but since Miss Austen hadn't been properly introduced to them, the very proper lady would never have presumed to write about them.

The Wardrobe Series demands patience and attention to detail, as it spans different timelines and, perhaps, universes. Readers must be prepared to set one story aside to immerse themselves in another. That will then provide context for what they've read and set the stage for what is to come.

The Austenesque Master Lory Lilian says of the Wardrobe:

As an author myself, I admit I could never craft such a complex, enchanting, and exciting story, not to mention an entire series! Congratulations to Don for a masterful work! I highly recommend The Bennet Wardrobe series to all readers, not only those who love Pride and Prejudice, but anyone who enjoys time travel, mystery, originality, and history.

Ten years have gone by since Mary Bennet first met the Wardrobe. Now, the saga’s portrait has emerged. Every Bennet has put their shoulder to the wheel to restore the Universe’s balance. Hint: Love powers everything that occurs.

BTW: Caroline’s letter reappeared in the final volume of the Wardrobe, The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy.

CC: That sounds intriguing! Let's look at the excerpt, shall we?

Chapter One

London and Hertfordshire, 1691

Grinling Gibbons gently rubbed the marquetry finish on the double-door wardrobe in the middle of his Ludgate Hill workroom. The seamless arabesque design gracing the front of the richly stained oak cabinet grew out of the complex patterns Gibbons had sketched during his visit to the mihrab in the Moorish Mosque in Cordoba. The mandala tapestries brought back by the Honorable East India Company ships also had inspired him; the plunder of the rarest sort would brighten England's gray damp. Exotic art was flooding the homes of deep-pocketed residents of the better districts and estates, who wanted to purchase a level of culture commensurate with the wealth filling their coffers.

This current commission was granted to Gibbons by a newly minted land-owning gentleman in possession of a rural Hertfordshire estate. The project had been a challenge and an opportunity. He did not know Christopher Bennet’s source of wealth—whether from Barbadian sugar or by having picked the right side in the Stuart family wars so recently concluded by what many had begun calling “The Glorious Revolution.” It did not matter to Gibbons. His only concern was to have a ready source of funds to continue his efforts to combine science and the occult, much like his friend Isaac Newton. Newton’s recent postulations on the nature of the fabric of the universe and time had given Gibbons pause—and a mission to prove them possible.

The wardrobe he was finishing would, he hoped, show that the clockwork universe Newton suggested could be set and controlled by those who rested upon its infinite sweep hands. Logically, mathematics and material governed Newton’s universe. But Gibbons also knew that Newton considered the old ways, the spiritual—not religious—element to be an equally important, if less discernible, driving force long neglected during the 1600 years of Christian ascendancy. The coarse term “magic” seemed to insult the deep ruminations of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, and Indians, who postulated that Man could pierce the veil separating him from pathways transcending the limitations of time and space. But magic could suffice until a better term was found to explain what he expected the wardrobe to do.

***

Nearly a year ago, before he agreed to take the commission, Gibbons had traveled to the relative wilds some thirty miles from the city to understand the setting in which the work would reside. Arriving by coach at the crossroads town of Meryton, he asked about the location of Longbourn, Christopher Bennet’s estate. Told that it was a brief walk from town, Gibbons set off down a narrow lane between lines of oak and elm trees bowing overhead to join in a leafy canopy that cut the worst of the mid-summer heat. To his left, he observed a hummock, which the locals had told him was known as Oakham, upon which summit could still be found the remains of medieval fortifications placed there by some unknown lord seeking to protect his holdings. No doubt the view was commanding, although now, in 1691, it was more peaceful than in earlier days.

The manor house that overlooked a narrow lawn behind a simple iron gate separating the graveled drive from the cart path arrested his craftsman’s eye. The two-story front was pleasantly overgrown, the native ivy lending a woodland feel, integrating Man’s work into God’s demesne. The windows, paned with what surely could only be plate glass from de Nehou’s new factory in France, attested to the affluence of the estate’s master. The grounds were well-kept and inviting. This was a gentleman’s home, not his status symbol.

Gibbons walked through a wicket gate and approached the portico. He pulled the bell cord and asked to see Mr. Bennet. As the butler bowed him into the library, Gibbons saw an unguarded Christopher Bennet leaning over a darkly stained English oak writing table. The man seemed one with the furniture, tanned a nutmeg-brown and powerfully built, with neck and shoulders more suited to a stevedore than a gentleman.

Ah, a man who has made his fortune in trade, as willing to stow casks of tea below decks as to drink it in a drawing room.

Bennet looked up at the sound of his servant’s voice. He schooled his features to impassivity that quickly changed to pleasure as he recognized Gibbons’s name. Striding around the table, he crossed to the craftsman and bowed respectfully. “Master Gibbons, meeting someone so accomplished and respected is a great honor. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Christopher Bennet, late of the Honourable East India Company and now master of Longbourn.”

Gibbons, used to dealing with British society’s upper levels, from country squires to bluebloods walking Whitehall’s corridors, genially nodded back and replied in his Netherlander-accented English. “Ich, sir, am Grinling Gibbons, master cabinetmaker, commissioned to the royal houses of Orange and Stuart. I have come in response to your request that I consider undertaking a project on your behalf.”

Bennet stood straighter, impressed by Gibbons’s connections. “I am somewhat surprised you have traveled so far from town to visit my home. Given your clientele, I imagine that people would come to you.”

Gibbons let out a large chuckle. “Ach, Mr. Bennet. While many seek out Gibbons, I choose only the few endeavors that interest me the most, ones that meet my immediate creative needs. And those people I visit to see whether we are of like mind.”

“I once was approached by a princeling in line for some throne in the Holy Roman Empire. He was ein fop. I brought in two paintings and said to pick his favorite, and I would choose mine. If we agreed, I would consider his project. No amount of gold would convince me to work for him if we disagreed.

“ Naturlijk, my time in his court was short.” Gibbons snorted.

Bennet smiled at the image of the gnarled cabinetmaker facing down a silk-hosed preener. While Gibbons’s accent and manner were amusing, his big hands—long-fingered, almost delicate, better suited for the harpsichord or a great organ than a hammer and chisel—captivated Bennet. These were an artist’s tools, capable of realizing a remarkable inner vision that few could cherish, let alone discern. And, if he was anything, Christopher Bennet was a man of great discernment.

He could feel Gibbons’s desire to find something, a kernel of treasure, in a world of the trivial. Bennet was a direct man. He was one to beat around the bush. Longbourn’s master wanted a Gibbons in his home, not because it was ostentatious, but because it was the best.

But he knew that Gibbons wanted something as well. “Pleasantries and social forms are lost on men like us, Mr. Gibbons, are they not? Perhaps we should stop dancing around each other. You have traveled along thirty miles of poor road to get here, and I have an estate to rebuild.”

“How must I be compatible with your sensibilities so that my wife and staff will not be left wondering where they will hang a cloak or safely store a bonnet?” Bennet challenged.

Gibbons turned away, sweeping his eyes over freshly painted walls lined with half-empty shelves, stopping when he took in the double French windows onto the rear garden. “I imagine that there are moments when you look out from this room, this sanctuary of male solitude, and see the shades of future children running and laughing or ladies walking arm in arm. Or a solitary girl, head bowed, weeping over a stillborn love.

“After all, is that not why we build? You—your estate; me—my cabinets?

“ We create, not for ourselves, although that is a happy side result, but rather for our posterity—for our families, our children, our children’s children, ja? Somewhere deep inside, we pray to hear those voices of the future saying, ‘My great-grandfather built this.’ It is that legacy that will ensure our remembrance.

“Is that not the deepest of all human worries—that we shall have lived a life that leaves no mark deep enough to be remembered once we are no longer here?”

He turned and fixed his gaze on Bennet’s face, revealing his soul within the depths of his ice-blue eyes.

Bennet held the stare, absorbed it with his uniquely shaped orbs, took a deep breath, and quietly asked again, “What is it you seek of me, Master Gibbons? You say posterity. You speak of the future. You talk of what can only be my descendants. Speak plainly, sir. Where are you taking our conversation?”

Gibbons paused for a moment. His eyes lost focus as if he were looking into another realm. Then he snapped back to Longbourn. He shook his head, clearly having arrived at a decision. He ignored Bennet’s questions. “Simply put, Mr. Bennet, I shall be happy to create a wardrobe that will fit into this home and any succeeding homes. It will be a work of art, something for the ages, but it will also be a fully functional masterpiece doing all that we would expect and more that we would not.

“No, please do not interrupt me. I have decided that Longbourn and the Bennets will do. Before I can conclude our little talk and begin work, you must agree to a few conditions.”

Now back in a world he understood, Bennet returned to his worktable and sat down, assuming the pose of a customer listening to the final offer. Gibbons motioned to the leather armchair opposite. Bennet nodded, giving permission. Gibbons seated himself. “First, you will never ask me the cost, only agree to pay what I bill you.

“Next, you will not have any influence on the wardrobe's final design. I shall decide the materials and the decoration. You may ask for something. I may choose to include it, or not. That is my decision. And you will not know any more until it is delivered. Once you take possession of the wardrobe, you can never alter its design or finish.

“Third, you must agree for your part and on behalf of all of your descendants that the wardrobe will never leave the control of your family. Someone from the Bennet family must always keep the wardrobe.”

Gibbons paused, leading Bennet to stir. “These are neither unreasonable nor unfair. I agree.”

Gibbons cut off any further comment with a suddenly raised hand. “Oh, but I am not finished.

One last condition. The wardrobe will have special properties that will separate it from the norm.”

He smiled. “This will not just be a receptacle for clothing. It will be unique in this world and all those that come after. My condition is that once you learn of this singular nature, you will never reveal it to anyone who is not a Bennet. Not a wife or husband. No non-Bennet cousins or married-in brothers or sisters. No friends. Bennets only.

“And if a Bennet is childless, the secret will die with him or her, but somehow, I imagine your line will be particularly fecund, so there will be little danger of that.”

Christopher Bennet was a man who prided himself on his sensible nature, and Gibbons seemed to be talking sense, but on a daft subject. There were no details of these unique properties. Were they real? Or were they manifestations of that creative genius that always borders on insanity?

Bennet sat quietly for a minute, staring at Gibbons, who never fidgeted. Then, “Well, Mr. Gibbons, I do not see your conditions as objectionable. Either you are a rational man who believes these special properties will exist once you finish the wardrobe, or you have been around Chinese lotus eaters far too often and have slipped the bonds of reality. In either event, you will deliver a supreme example of woodworking genius that will be no more and no less than a wardrobe of incredible beauty and, not coincidentally, worth any price you demand.

“Either way, I shall be thoroughly pleased. Thus, I do agree to your final condition.”

Gibbons, satisfied, sat back. He exclaimed, “It will be verwonderlijk…oh, how to say in English…wondrous! To work now and to do the work, I shall ask you just two things. The third oak to the left of your front gate will supply the framing for the wardrobe. This will forever link the cabinet to your Longbourn, as its heart is your heart, the power of this land, and this family.

Und, Meneer Bennet, I also need some of your blood. Oh, please do not think strangely of me. As I have always done before, I want to include the owner in the work. Your blood will imbue your spirit—much as Bussotti did with the Red Violin—in your finished piece. It will attune it to your family and their souls.”

Bennet wagged his head slowly from side to side. He looked up and smiled at Gibbons. “Why do I believe that every patron of the arts has had one of these conversations? Am I Pope Julius? Am I Duke Ernst? Oh, devil take me; you may have your blood and your oak.”

Gibbons left Longbourn that afternoon followed by a wagon hauling a massive oak trunk. In his pocket was a small ceramic vial, tightly stoppered with a cork.

***

Gibbons oiled the last veneer strips in the still of his deserted workshop. He gently closed the doors, revealing a small cavity split down the middle—half on the left panel, half on the right. Humming a tuneless song, the master turned to the low table next to him and picked up two small pieces of birch, each perfectly shaped to fill the gap in the mandala. Gluing them in place, he pressed carefully to seat them.

Then, pulling the doors apart, he reached down again, this time to pick up a small gold bowl into which he had already poured the blood removed from a vein in Bennet’s left arm. He gently stirred the mixture with his horsehair brush and added some linseed oil. Humming lower now, he lightly dabbed the pale birch with the essence, instantly staining the wood a rich carmine.

He set the bowl down, turned away, and left the shop.

The following day Gibbons stood in the doorway, looking at the wardrobe glistening in a burst of sunshine swirling with dust motes. He squared his shoulders and strode across the room. Gripping the open doors firmly and muttering a quiet incantation, he swiftly closed them.

The completed design shimmered in the light. A low note rang out as the two stained birch chips glimmered of their own accord. The mandala suddenly gained depth and form, shifting in Gibbons’s eyes as the note continued to echo. He jerked his hands away, but the sense of motion continued.

Then all was quiet. The Wardrobe stood before him. His heart lifted because he knew that he had accomplished his task. Yet the thrill faded as he realized that, like Moses, he could never partake of the glory of crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. He would forever be stranded in the present.

“It is finished,” he breathed.

The Bennet Wardrobe books are best read in the following order:

The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey

Henry Fitzwilliam’s War

The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque

Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess

The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn

The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament

The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion

The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy

About the Author:

Don Jacobson has written professionally since his post-collegiate days as a wire service reporter in Chicago. His output has ranged from news and features to advertising, television and radio. His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. Earlier in his career, he published five books, all non-fiction.

He holds an advanced degree in History with specialties in Modern European History and the History of American Foreign Relations. As a college instructor, Don teaches United States History, World History, the History of Western Civilization and Research Writing.

Don turned his passion for reading The Canon into writing #Austeesque Fiction. He has published thirteen works in the genre since late 2015. As a member of The Austen Authors Collective, Don joins (and he is modestly bowing his head to admit that he is the knave in this deck of Queens and Kings) other Janites who seek to extend the Mistress’ stories beyond the endings she so carefully crafted.