FITZWILLIAM D’arcy, the dashing yet aloof hero in Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice was inspired by a Limerick man.
Descended from an old Huguenot family, Thomas Langlois Lefroy was born in Limerick in 1776 and went on to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Despite his political and academic renown, Austen’s ‘Irish friend’ is best known as the only known love interest of the iconic novelist.
In a letter dated January 1796 Austen writes: “I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together………. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you”
Their whirlwind romance began when the pair were introduced at a ball when Tom spent Christmas with relations in the parish where Austen’s father was a rector.
However, it was a love not to be as the Austen’s were on the lower fringes of the English gentry. Someone of Lefroy’s standing was obligated to marry a more eligible suiter.
Upon there last meeting Austen wrote to a friend: “The day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea”
Lefroy later wed Mary Paul of County Wexford and they had seven children. When Austen died at the age of 42 in 1817, Lefroy traveled to England to pay his respects.
He died in 1869 in Bray at the age of 93.
However, the Limerick man’s legacy lives on in arguably the most popular works of ficion ever written.
