"He is no common theif"....WHAT?!?! Lmao! That was the stupidest line I've heard! Wickham is exactly that. He leaves gaming debts & unpaid bills wherever he goes & then disappears without paying them. Darcy has had to pay them in the past. Sounds like a common thief to me.
shareHe's the definition of scoundrel.
shareYou have to understand the context of the remark...to them, a "common thief" would be someone of the lower classes stealing eggs from a hen, or whatever they could lay their hands on from a barn, etc. Wickham was brought up at Pemberly and presumably reasonably well educated, married to an upper class girl...a thief he is, certainly, but in their eyes, not a "common" one.
shareI thought the line was "Wickham may be many things but not a murderer".
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1075976/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Wickham's debts were unpaid bills to tradesmen and tailors etc. This , utterly reprehensible as it is to us now, was accepted practice of aristocracy/gentry of the time . A gentlemen might, without losing any honour at all, owe his tailor hundreds and then calmly order another coat or whatever ( which he still did not intend to pay for ) as a way of staving him off. Debts of honour were different and a gentlemen should pay those before any other . Thus a gaming debt owed to some hugely wealthy compatriot over a game of faro or something took total precedence of a debt to the tailor even if the tailor was ruined thereby. Honour, see. Ugh.
share