“My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have the sense of their father and mother.—When they get to our age, I dare say they will not think about officers any more than we do. I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well—and indeed, so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls, I shall not say nay to him; and I thought Colonel Forster looked very becoming the other night at Sir William’s in his regimentals.”

In keeping with the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, here is another quote from that work, and in accompaniment is the painting ‘In 1816’ by Edmund Blair Leighton, a Pre-Raphaelite artist who delved into some feminine romantic Regency themes.