The Cliffs of Hertfordshire

by Wade H. Mann

It turns out that Mary Bennet does not care for being publicly humiliated by her father at the Netherfield Ball, and her reaction has far-reaching consequences. This story is moderately high angst, has a pretty bad beginning for the Bennets, and a long road to happiness., but it is several adventure stories in one along with the occasional bit of romance.

411 pages, ebook

First published May 20, 2017

Reviews

[wosedwew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enough is Enough and Too Much is Plenty! ~ Author Unknown

Quote from the Book: Everyone has a breaking point. Many, perhaps most, are blissfully unaware of this, and may even go through their entire lives without ever approaching close enough to sniff it out. The breaking point was like a cliff. You could come as close as you wanted so long as you never actually went over the side.

Mary is the first of the Bennet sisters to reach her Cliff. She topples over at the Netherfield Ball: after her Father chastises her publicly she rushes from the room and plows into Darcy. He scolds her and “thar she blows!” The quiet, demure Mary Bennet shouts truths to her family, Collins, the Bingleys, and especially Darcy. She runs from the ballroom and out of the lives of everyone in Meryton.

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

After Mary’s disappearance, adversity hits the Bennet family anew: both silly sisters are pregnant and refuse to name the men involved. Mr. Bennet washes his hands of them both but since their disgrace is already known in Meryton, the sisters remain at Longbourn.

Elizabeth and Jane face the Cliff of Hertfordshire. Since their sisters are not concerned about their offspring, Elizabeth and Jane plan to raise their nieces/nephews on their own. They secretly leave Hertfordshire to find employment and save as much money as they can.

Yes, I am positive that one of the great curatives of our evils, our maladies, social, moral, and intellectual, would be a return to the soil, a rehabilitation of the work of the fields. ~Charles Wagner

Mary has limited funds and must also seek employment. She falls in with a group of wash women and builds a life of hard work and blessings. She is occasionally near to people known to her in Meryton but is so changed she is not recognised.

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse. ~ From the movie The African Queen

But wait – how does Jane acquire three children? How can she escape her personal Cliff?

And how does Darcy come so close to finding the Bennet sisters only to see them escape again and again?

You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far. ~ Uncle Remus

Eventually, Darcy discovers Elizabeth living right under his nose. Together (a massive breach of Regency propriety) they search for Jane and find Mary.

Impossible as it might seem, all the characters face their personal Cliff and find their Happily Ever After.

The story moves back and forth in time. To avoid confusion, attend to the author's notes and the dates.
This is a long unpublished story available at:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12421551...

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? ~ Rose F. Kennedy

[James S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a stupendous story. I think the author should let 3 or 4 friends help him edit the story and then see if he can find a publisher. It is good enough to be a hard bound book.

I recommend the story highly.

[J. W. Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12421551...

“Audaces fortuna iuvat (latin) – Fortune favors the bold.” Virgil

I loved this clean, unpublished WIP by WadeH. Since it was a WIP, it contained the usual amount of errors and problems with continuity, which the author willingly pointed out. He acknowledged that as he tried to manage the various timelines, that he would have to edit them before publication. It was nice to read his author notes at the beginning of each chapter [58, plus an epilogue]. It gave the reader the feeling of being right there with him during the writing process.

In every tragedy, catastrophe, disaster, or explosion… there is that moment, or state of calm, just before all hell breaks loose. With every volcanic eruption, there are signs [quakes or vibrations] announcing the awakening giant, and woe be to those who ignore them. With an approaching storm, whether tornado or hurricane, there is a time of preparation or evacuation. However, it is the explosion that usually catches people off guard. But even in that, there is a catalyst… a spark or something that sets off the devastation. It was ever so with the Bennet family of Longbourn, especially with Mary, the middle daughter.

Who would have thought that the Netherfield Ball would be the scene of epic proportions for the denizens of Meryton? Who would guess that the middle Bennet daughter, long ignored and overlooked, would be the means of upsetting the tranquil atmosphere of the general populace. Who could possibly guess that from that moment on, life as the Bennet family knew it, would never be the same? Could they ever guess that their house of cards would shortly fall?

Our author was very creative with using the metaphor of our characters facing a cliff. This was a strong reference to what each member faced and how they handled it… whether they yielded to it, fought it, succumbed to it, embraced it or just gave up. Every Bennet had a mirror placed right in their face and they had to come to the realization of who, and what, they really were. The reader is shocked and horrified as the family crashes and burns with the reality of their short-comings and failures. One-by-one, the family unit fractures and crumbles.

WadeH has a way with words and can write the perfect set-down. Words are powerful and as effective as any sword. Mary Bennet, for once in her life, was presented with a sword of injustice. She was the volcano that no one had paid attention to… and had failed to notice the vibrations, prior to the eruption. This one opportunity gave her the floor and she took it. She blasted the ballroom with the long suppressed molten lava of her vitriol. Her blast was more devastating that any storm, tornado, or hurricane as she laid waste the faults of her parents and younger sisters. After years of parental neglect, disdain and ridicule of the younger sisters, the igniting spark came first from her father, then Mr. Darcy and finally, her elder sister Elizabeth. It was too much and Mary Bennet simply exploded. When the destruction was over… she bolted from the ballroom and disappeared from her family, Longbourn, and Hertfordshire.

“You shouldn’t be fearful of starting over.” Jeffrey Katzenberg

We are presented with a character examination and assessment of each Bennet sister. As they separated, we were then given a chance to see them stripped of every gently bred notion and opinion they ever had. They now faced survival of the barest kind… alone and away from family support. It quickly became necessary to put aside their thoughts of being a gentlewoman and to strive to simply do what was necessary to exist.

RECOVERY: “It’s best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.” Anne Baxter

It was amazing to watch as each Bennet sister rose from her own pile of ashes and soared. WadeH was brilliant as he showed the mettle that made up each sister. Stripped of their pride, gently bred notions, each sister existed within a new circle of society and made new discoveries about themselves and who they really were as a person. Oh, this was so hard to read.

It made me wonder if our author was intending this to be a sociological study on the sisters. How would they react if they were reduced to the barest minimalist state? What would they do in order to survive? How could/would they survive? What was really at the core of the Bennet sisters? Well… WadeH was more than willing to show us. I really appreciated watching him rebuild the house of Bennet from the ground up. Many characters emerged into their own in this story and it was a delight to watch them grow up or stand up right before our eyes. Well done.

LOVE: “We are worth fighting for,” we both whispered. Giving one another permission, into each other madness.” Efrat Cybulkiewicz

There are several couples that are a delight to follow as they seek their HEA. Some take longer to develop than others, but then we knew the personalities of ODC was not going to develop in a day. I loved the many love stories and how they came about. There are many funny stories and many encounters that we the reader longed to see. WadeH gave us those moments and I thank him for them. Some people deserved to have those well worded set-downs and I will always think of WadeH and his most excellent words. Yep, the boy can write. Have a tissue handy on the epilogue. Oh, my poor romantic heart.

Rating: PG-13: it is clean, but there is discussion of adult themes [teenage pregnancy, etc.].

“Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.” P. T. Barnum

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a extraordinary piece of fiction. Now I must post a disclaimer: This is published on Fanfiction so it is not subject to the harsh conditions and requirements I apply to books which are published and sold or offered via KU on Amazon. It's free, it is raw and it has errors but I don't care.

The author posted it as a serialized version which is now complete. And with serialized stories things can get out of hand, but in a good way. Were I asked to offer suggestions for publication I would run each story arc as a separate part and then bring them together in the last act. But I wasn't and it isn't my place to judge that would just make it more readable. This is a story where you must read the author notes before each section.

Onto the plot, which is spectacular, we open at the Netherfield Ball where the blandest of the Bennet's Miss Mary reaches her boiling point. We have all been there, well I have were a seemingly tiny thing just pushes you beyond your ability to maintain your composure and you lose it. She collides with Mr. Darcy and ends up exploding verbally on him, Bingley, Caroline, her mother, her father, her sisters and some other Meryton residents. Utterly humiliated she flees the ball and disappears.

If that wasn't enough to make the Bennets persona non grata the world seems to conspire to reveal the seedy underbelly of Longbourn. Mr. Bennet is an alcoholic who wants his ports and books more than anything else. Mrs. Bennet's 'salts' may be less vinegar and more opiod, and the silliest girls in England are also the loosest girls in England as both are revealed to be increasing.

Into this comes Lizzy who decides she must shoulder all the responsibility for these situations, since no one else will. She and Jane, mostly Lizzy with Jane's agreement, plan to adopt the babies and push themselves to earn as much money as possible, causing both to leave Meryton for distant locations. Well Jane is distant, Lizzy ends up in some familiar locations to P&P fans. And Miss Mary, the most unappealing of the Bennets? She ends up pulling herself up by her bootstraps, dropping her sermons and picking up a laundry bat.
To add to all this confusion we have a love sick Fitzwilliam Darcy doing what ever he can to track down the missing Bennet sisters and having less than spectacular results.

There is much twisting and weaving of plot lines and outcomes. Several characters rise to new heights of awesomeness. And Lizzy learns that she can't control everything or anyone and lots of people will surprise her in a good way.

I loved this book. I will confess that the parallel and often out of sync time lines got a little confusing, the author even recognizes this and provides tips and tricks.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars

This is just awesome fan fiction. I can't, in good conscience, award it a full 5 stars because there are some out-of-time chapters that should have been fixed since it hasn't been a work-in-progress in almost a year now. It also has a few misspellings (COUNSEL, not council!!) and editing-type errors that need to be cleaned up. However, the story and flow of the writing absolutely grab the reader and won't let go.

This is long at 59 chapters. I'd ordinarily be demanding that a bunch of it be pruned. In this case, I'd be stumped if asked what to edit out.

I like the title, but it could just as easily be "The Seriously Dysfunctional Bennet Family." It starts at the Netherfield ball, where poor Mary reaches her breaking point. In the equivalent of a primal scream, she blurts out what everyone in Meryton thinks about Mr. Darcy (including the little tidbit that Elizabeth can't stand the sight of him) as well as expressing her frustration with her parents for not controlling the behavior of Lydia and Kitty. None of this is news to the locals, of course, but Mary's public meltdown becomes juicy gossip that immediately destroys the social standing of the Bennets in the community.

This might have passed in time, but after leaving the ballroom, Mary completely disappears from the neighborhood. Within months, Lydia and Kitty create a much bigger scandal. Mrs. Bennet hides in her chamber with her nervous condition and her salts, while Mr. Bennet hides in his study with his books and his port. Servants won't stay because the household is in such disarray. The Bennets have well and truly self-destructed.

Except....

When Mary sets off on her own, she finds more warmth and kindness among the tradespeople she never paid much attention to previously than she did in her own family. For the first time, she receives encouragement rather than being ignored or belittled, and a new Mary emerges.

Elizabeth and Jane recognize that their parents are ill-equipped to handle matters. Elizabeth comes up with a mad plan, leading her and Jane to leave Longbourn to earn money and make preparations for the family's future.

Darcy is tormented by Mary's declaration that Elizabeth detests him, and he feels guilt for his part in triggering the debacle at the Netherfield ball. His conscience leads him on a quest to find and make amends to the missing Bennet sisters.

This leads the book down four different paths following Mary (who's the real star of this story), Elizabeth, Darcy and Jane. Each one has experiences with various members of the lower classes that cause them to change and grow. By the time their paths coalesce, they take on the problems at Longbourn (which only increase during the interim) with a vengeance.

The story is epic storytelling at its finest. If you love good JAFF, read it.

[Carole (in Canada) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am going to go against the grain here and only give four stars to this unique story only because the author has indicated he will be publishing this story after editing, etc. I would like to reserve my five star rating until such time as it is published.

Others before me, have given fabulous reviews of this story. I can only concur. I found the concept unique and enjoyed seeing the development of Mary from a pedantic creature to one who blossomed into a woman worthy of the nomenclature. Jane is another, who is a force to be reckoned with after her fall from the cliff. Elizabeth, well she certainly took a lot upon herself, and climbed up her mountain after some time with stellar results. Kitty, we only see a little of, unfortunately. I am partial to her character and would have enjoyed seeing her face her cliff head on as Lydia did after having her eyes opened or in this case, her mouth shut.

One surprise for me was Georgiana. She made it perfectly clear to her brother what he needed to do. She was brilliant! It was also wonderful seeing more of Anne de Bourgh, Charlotte Collins and our dear Colonel. There are some delightful new characters that the author has developed...Mrs. Stewart and her son 'Sir' Norman along with 'Mrs. Frog' and others.

But let's not forget Mr. Darcy. When he sets his mind to something, he follows through until he is satisfied he has completed his task. And what a task he sets himself.

This will be a book worthy of five stars when it is published!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Reader,

Breaking point.

We all have one.

Occupied as we are with our busy lives,we approach it,circle it,until,unconscious of its life altering consequences,we meet it in a head on collision,the effects devastating for everyone in its immediate vicinity.

Having reached this point of no return,we are faced with choices-to use this as a springboard to welcome necessary but difficult changes into our Iives,and thus hopefully grow as a person,maturing into someone,few within your inner circle would recognise,before said point was reached.

Or remain within the clutches of the harmful,soul destroying and malignant stresses that saw you reach this point alone, unobserved and forgotten.

To embark on the road less travelled, destination unknown and to embrace a wide new world takes courage,yet this is indeed the path not one but several of the Bennet sisters traverse after the fateful events surrounding the ball held at Netherfield Park.

Sprinkled with self analysis and humour,this wonderful story centres on a very different set of circumstances and pits our beloved characters against the trials and tribulations that befall them on this extraordinary learning curve that they face with determination,strong will,inner resolve and love.

Highly addictive,this most unusual, intrinsically woven and satisfying tale is highly recommended!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this Pride and Prejudice variation - what if at the Netherfield Ball, Mary Bennet and Darcy collided - literally. What if that was Mary's breaking point after all the years suffering while living as a Bennet, and she went straight over her personal cliff and left Meryton. What if it was found out that both Kitty and Lydia were 'increasing'. This is that story.
Overall this is such an enjoyable story. Another entertaining re-read. Another -re-read.

[Teresita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale full of angst and twists, but very entertaining and original.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it but thought it went to far, hence 3 and not 4 stars.

[Madenna U · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wade H has a "hook" in some of his stories that work as a wonderful analogy. In this case, it was a cliff - how people approach, fall off, climb back up, wallow, never see it etc. These are all analogies for how people can emotionally deal with their troubles and tribulations. Boy do the Bennet sisters have troubles in this story. Luckily they also have strong men to assist and love them. The men in this story are partners - not allowed to take the glory or be the only ones in charge.

The emotion in this story is incredible and tears were shed.

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

really 3 1/2 stars

only because It skips around a bit. but otherwise good story

[Shayan Kh · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.4 stars

Again, I'm torn and have no idea how to rate this fanfiction. So I just rate it somewhere in the middle.
The writing is great, and I enjoyed most of the book a lot. But again, I hated the fast and totally unrealistic change of attitude and feelings of some of the characters, as it was in the other book by the same author I've read. Comically unrealistic. Like in the span of 5 minutes, someone goes from mildly liking someone's attention, to declaring their love.
The author states that this book is some kind of a character study under extreme stress, and I quite like the first parts of the book.
I also enjoyed the jumbled timeline. But these drastic changes in feelings of the characters are something I can't except in an otherwise good fanfiction.