#The mystery about Brandon's past works well in the context of keeping the surprises and the twists coming

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Thinking again about the darknesses that lurk underneath the surface of Sense and Sensibility (I have talked before about how Edward despite being the eldest is subjected to what we can argue is emotional and financial abuse by his family for years, and how the Dashwood women are disinherited on a whim of their great uncle), and this time specifically about the Brandons.

We get so little about them, and what we do get about them is all bad:

This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father... At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her... I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained... My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly.

Mr Brandon Sr is shown to us as being a greedy man, a bad administrator of his estate, and a cruel father. His first son seems cut of the same cloth, and his pleasures were not what they ought to have been is one of the most, if not the most sinister line between all the Austen novels. But there's more about him!:

Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief.

The Brandons were married for two years; the colonel returns to England and starts looking for her 3 years later. Young Eliza was then a 3 year old toddler. We are obliquely told that Brandon cut all ties with his brother:

It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford.

Eliza is now 17, so the eldest brother died when she was 14, which is 16 years after his marriage with the older Eliza. In that period of time, he managed to squander the whole of her fortune, and put the estate in debt again, as we are told earlier on by Mrs Jennings:

Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his circumstances now, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain.”

We know the Bennets, with five daughters, and without a saving mindset, still manage to live very comfortably with 2000 a year, and if they had had any mind to save money, they could have provided all five of them with decent dowries/money enough to keep them out of poverty when their father died if they were single. It is clearly not that the money isn't enough, or that Delaford is an unproductive estate; in fact, it is described to us as almost paradisiac:

Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so ’tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! ’tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone’s throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother.

One interesting character, though forgotten because only mentioned in passing, is the Brandon sister. On one of the quotes above we get that she's in Avignon for her health, and we know her husband is wealthy (and probably abroad with her) because it is his estate that the planned picnic is for:

A party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a brother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece of water; a sail on which was to form a great part of the morning’s amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure.

It is implied that Brandon and his BIL are in very good terms (and we know he's not afraid of cutting ties with bad relatives), and one can safely guess that at the very least he cares enough about his wife as to have her travel for her health. Another guess can be made about her getting married about 10 years before the events of the book. Whether she lived at home before that, or was at school or somewhere else, it isn't said.

But this way you can feel there's a parallel in a way, between the Brandons and the Tilneys: a greedy, cruel father, a son that follows on his steps, and a younger brother and sister managing the toxicity as best they can. Talking about this with @bad-at-names-and-faces, she brought up the idea that in that scheme, Cathy would be Eliza (if it wasn't her not being an orphan, or a rich heiress, and how that connects with Austen's line about Cathy not being born to be a heroine at the beginning of Northanger Abbey). Certainly part of it is the romantic gothicness of the Brandon backstory, united with NA's commentary on Gothic tropes, but to me it drove home with even greater force how such a situation would break a man; losing Cathy that way would have definitely broken Tilney, and if we had met him 14 years down the line, would he have appeared to the unacquainted much different than Brandon appeared to the Dashwood sisters?