LOOKING FOR LEFROY

I lingered outside a huge iron gate on 18 July 2010 hoping to catch someone friendly enough to answer my curiosity because I was informed that the house within was no ordinary house as the owner is a Lefroy. Just as the name Kennedy would bear associations to U.S. presidency, to an English literature enthusiast, the name Lefroy could be the Lefroy that Mr.Darcy was probably modelled after in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Let me explain.

Jane Austen died on 18 July 1817 and Mr. Darcy the novel’s hero, made famous by Colin Firth in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is the man that most ladies would die for. Word has it that one of the likely candidates of real life Mr. Darcy was Tom Lefroy, a 20 year old Irish who visited Jane at her Hampshire home of Steventon in mid December 1795 on her 20th birthday.

Unlike Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the novel who finally tied the knot with Mr.Darcy, Jane Austen remained single throughout her life, despite being called on by potential suitors. It was a question of being successful and risking it all. Tom Lefroy was expected to ‘rise into distinction and there haul up the rest’ but he could risk all of it if he married Jane who had no money. Tom who chose the former went on to build a massive Gothic mansion Carrigglas Manor for his family in County Longford. The grey turreted house has recently been renovated into a hotel with a rambling 660-acre golf course and housing estate. Interestingly enough, Tom called his first daughter Jane after marrying Mary Paul in 1799. This private segment of Austen’s life was portrayed in the 2007 biographical portrait ‘Becoming Jane, directed by Julian Jarrold with Anne Hathaway acting as Jane.

Jane Austen said, "A woman especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."

When we compare the station of a young person then and now, we have indeed come a long way. The good and the bad. When before young girls could only dream of going to school and cash and status conscious parents kept women from the men of their dreams, now we have opportunities to succeed and the liberty to live. It was also not uncommon then for young men to leave school to fend for the family and take on more jobs than one. They were determined, focussed and industrious. They took pride in the toil of their labour, so to speak.

But now, we have survival guides on how to cheat the welfare state.

I have been here for a fortnight and I have met more than five young educated people who prefer to depend on the state for their daily sustenance and hang around pubs smoking, drinking and idlying. Psychologically, they are convinced that state benefits are not charity handouts but they are their rights. They still live with their parents and their parents still pick up after them. They take on part time rather take full time jobs. I even heard one grumbling that working from 3p.m. to 9 p.m. at a part time job had destroyed his social life.

I watched a cartoon once where a group of graduating students queued to receive their scrolls from the college president. After having received their scrolls and tossing their mortar boards into the air, they made a bee line to another queue, this time the dole queue. I was eight then and did not understand one bit what it was all about.

According to a Leicester Mercury report early this year, Leicestershire's dole queue has seen its biggest increase in 11 months after soaring by more than 1,000. The number of Jobseekers' Allowance claimants in the city and county rose by 4.3% to 24,607 in January. Northern Ireland has been hit harder by the economic crisis than any other UK region. New figures show that six towns in the province are in the top 10 UK dole blackspots based on regional increases in claimants.

I was brought up in a generation where living off the state would be a huge embarrassment and a disaster. We all had to try different types of work while deciding on a long-term career plan. In fact, while we were yet students we did part time jobs during the holidays. I knew someone who worked at his parents’ food stall after school and yet he rose to become a successful dentist. I knew of another who gave all the prize money he received from the university to his parents to help run the household.

As in every scenario there are genuine cases of hardworking people being laid off. But then again, there are plenty of loafers. It is every working class parent’s dream to see a child graduate and get a job, move out of the family home by 25, own a house by 30 with some savings on the side for marriage and set up a new home. It represents upward social and financial mobility. Now, we sincerely rejoice with the parents who have responsible grown up children and lament in silence if ours are not the same.

That brings me back to the industrious Lefroy who being the first son among 12 siblings probably gave up personal happiness to help better the status of his family. So as I reluctantly walked away from the huge iron gate, I told myself I must call another day just to confirm my suspicions that the real descendents of Tom Lefroy are in my neighbourhood. I live in hope still.