Today’s edition of Jane Austen Craft Projects I Wish I Had Time For features a charming cross-stitch kit based on one of C.E. Brock’s 1895 illustrations of Pride and Prejudice. The picture – black-and-white in the original, but tastefully colored in for stitching purposes -- shows Darcy looking down his nose at Elizabeth and telling Bingley, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.”
C.E. Brock and his brother H.M. Brock are among the most famous illustrators of Austen, though I’ve always found their work a bit too pretty-pretty to suit my taste for a spikier Austen. The original of the cross-stitch picture can be seen here; Maggie Sullivan’s Molland's website compiles the Austen illustrations of both Brocks, along with e-texts of all the novels.
You will already have noticed that Yiota’s XStitch, the family-run business that markets this kit through Amazon, doesn’t know how to spell “Elizabeth,” as in Bennet. (This is especially unfortunate since its mailing address is on “Austen Road” – in, of all English counties, Jane Austen’s own Hampshire.)
But I’m in a kindly mood this week, so I will forgive them this trespass and return instead to imagining myself living a life that includes time for cross-stitch.