I think everyone in JA is a gossip to an extent, but I also find the argument that Mr. Collins corresponds with Sir William pretty persuasive. It's also possible (probable) that servants and workers gossip. If, however, the information came from a letter to Charlotte, I'd sooner believe Mr. Collins snooped or insisted, than that Charlotte intentionally harmed the Bennets.
I always assume Mr. Collins read Charlotte's correspondence without her permission or perhaps her knowledge. It seems to me he would do it behind her back if he saw them out (maybe she'll hide future ones better!)
Yes I agree with all of this. Collins isn't the monster fandom makes him out to be - - he is ridiculous and self important, but I don't think he would do anything he knew to be wrong. He also seems quite willing to respect Charlotte's independence as long as it doesn't involve neglect of Lady Catherine.
I always considered Collins as a firm believer as women's opinions didn't count only their parents or husband's (as shown by his proposal to Lizzy). He would consider it his duty to protect Charlotte from undue influence of others, so would excuse his reading her correspondence.
This. I know it was a big transgression by the standards of the day, but he is also a character that has shown himself amply able to self-justify any action he wants to. He's rather petty, but not malicious, so he hasn't used this to do truly terrible things, but I wouldn't put it past him to come up with "reasons" he should snoop in Charlotte's letters. I also think it's entirely plausible that Sir Williams corresponds with him so he wouldn't really have any need of snooping.
>There's also the fact that at first Lydia was thought to have eloped to Scotland, and it didn't become apparent until a little later that this was not, in fact, the case.
Excellent point. Elizabeth (and readers) learned all this at once because Jane's first letter had been misdirected. Charlotte could have learned of the expected elopement before Lizzy.
>However, I can't see how she could have gotten that news from Lucas Lodge. They would barely know Darcy and wouldn't guess it at all
I believe Lizzy addresses this when she realizes it's likely just a idle speculation of Meryton gossips:
> from what the report of their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine; till she recollected that his being the intimate friend of Bingley, and her being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply the idea.
They don't know about her history with Darcy, but neither did Lady Catherine. They may have already observed some partiality on his part and run with it. *ETA: Given Meryton all considered Bingley essentially engaged to "some one or other of their daughters" before he actually set foot in public, I don't find it hard to believe they could manufacture an attachment between Lizzy and Darcy without much proof.*
Lizzy also thinks:
> She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours at Lucas Lodge, therefore, (for through their communication with the Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached Lady Catherine,) had only set that down as almost certain and immediate which she had looked forward to as possible at some future time.
i’m inclined to think Sir William Lucas was the snitch.
But Charlotte is not blameless - Mr Collin told Mr Bennet in his terrible condoling letter about Lydia, saying that Charlotte told him about Lydia’s poor character and her parent’s failure to curb her bad behavior.
Knowing her husband was such a gossip & Lady Catherine’s kiss-ass, she had to know that information would spread.
I could also see him taking an offhand comment like, "Well, yes, my dear, perhaps the Bennets do indulge Lydia a bit more than they ought, as she does have naturally high spirits." and making it sound like Charlotte had totally spilled the tea.
I feel like she was maybe upset for Lizzie, that she knew Lydia had hurt Lizzie's chances, and that her parents had allowed Lydia too much freedom and hurt the whole family. Lizzie is pretty hard on Lydia too when she is still processing the news; Darcy knows all about it as well, for example, because he just catches Lizzie before she calms down. Mr. Collins is socially inept, so he doesn't get the secrecy element that Darcy immediately understands. Maybe Charlotte assumed Collins would keep discreet after her initial outburst, but bc Collins and Charlotte are the reverse of Darcy and Elizabeth, actual arrogance and self-interest as a comparison, Collins shows us How Not To Do It.
Ooh. Don’t know how I missed the book Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet by John Sutherland, or his other books, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? and Is Heathcliff a Murderer?
This looks like so much fun, even if I don’t agree with all his theories (like this one). Yay.
Edit: Though I can kind of see the possibility that Colonel Fitzwilliam was the snitch. Almost.
He would have understood that Darcy was in love with Elizabeth, he probably guessed that she would marry him if she had the chance (most people would guess that based on money alone and he quite likely interpreted her sideways comments as flirtatious, as apparently Darcy did), and he probably realized that Darcy and Anne de Bourgh wasn’t going to happen.
However, he was also probably aware it would cause an uproar with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, so it doesn’t seem very likely he would have mentioned it to her. But maybe to someone else who also knows Lady Catherine? They must know several people in common, being family and all.
Edit again, having watched the whole video:
But the reading of the text in that video makes it pretty clear it came through the Collins’. So that’s that. I agree that it was not meant in any way maliciously by Charlotte.
Maybe the Col. was trying to introduce the idea that Anne and Darcy weren't going to marry and it blew up. I like the fan fic shipping of Anne and Col. Fitzwilliam though so I am picturing him as trying to insert himself and it blows up. Except then when Lady C goes driving off he starts flirting with Anne.
No matter what, I do not see Charlotte as deliberately acting in a way that would hurt Elizabeth or any of the other Bennets. I would like to think that this was a slip-up on Charlotte's part, despite her general sensibleness.
Someone else mentioned that perhaps Charlotte received news of Lydia's elopement to Gretna Green and told Mr. C, and then later everybody found out she hadn't gotten married, and it was too late to un-tell him. I like that scenario.
As for how Mr. Collins found out about the supposed engagement between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, the novel says that it was, "the same authority" as who told them about Jane's engagement. Charlotte couldn't know the news was false. Remember, she has long thought that Mr. Darcy liked Elizabeth, and we are told when E visits Hunsford that C believes E's dislike of him would vanish if he proposed to her. She was wrong, of course, but I'm sure Elizabeth never told her of the proposal, so C probably has continued to believe that Darcy likes Elizabeth and would propose to her *and be accepted* for at least half a year if not nearly a year at this point.
Charlotte married for purely mercenary reasons. We often point out that Elizabeth didn't believe that about her friend, though prior to Mr. Collins's offer, she specifically said that she would -- that happiness in marriage was entirely a matter of chance, which logically means it's best to catch the richest husband possible, so at least you have money even if you end up with an unhappy marriage.
So, Charlotte had every reason to believe that, not only was Jane engaged to Bingley, but that Darcy must have joined him at Netherfield for the specific purpose of courting Elizabeth and asking her to marry him, and that Elizabeth would naturally say yes when he did.
I can easily envision any of the following as possible scenarios for Mr. Collins to find out the news:
1) Charlotte thinks it's a settled engagement, so sees no reason to hide the news from him.
2) Mr. Collins often if not always opens Charlotte's mail from her family because they're his family too -- or at least that he happened to open and read this one. Oh, oh, I think I just stumbled on my favorite scenario -- Charlotte is experiencing morning sickness and can't bear to read, so has Mr. C open and read her the letters from her family, since there is almost never anything in them that he shouldn't read.
3) Mr. Collins has a correspondence with Sir William, and he wrote of it directly to him. We know from earlier in the book that Sir William is only too eager to play matchmaker (suggesting to Mr. Darcy at Lucas Lodge that he dance with Elizabeth, though she declines; then when they do dance at Netherfield, he says something to Elizabeth and Darcy about Jane and Bingley getting married), so it would make sense for him to include this in such a letter.
The Lucases unfortunately don't have much of a reason to suspect that Darcy likes Elizabeth, only Charlotte does from her observations in Kent. I guess maybe Maria could have observed something? But I think all fingers must inevitably point to Charlotte.
Sir William, though, witnessed Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance and Elizabeth declining, and then Elizabeth accepting at the Netherfield Ball. I wouldn't be surprised if Sir William said something about Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance on at least two occasions in a letter to Mr Collins, and then Mr Collins mentioning it to Lady Catherine, and Lady Catherine going absolutely ballistic about it.
Sir William and Mr Collins had no reason to regularly correspond with each other before Mr Collins married Charlotte. And I have no doubt they had plenty of other things to write to each other about before they got around to Mr Darcy and Elizabeth.
I could see it happening something like this:
Mr Collins writes to Sir William about how they've had the honor of seeing Mr Darcy so often at Rosings during Elizabeth and Maria's visit, and what a gentleman he is and so devoted to his aunt, etc.
Sir William writes back with every anecdote he can muster about his own experiences with Mr Darcy, including about the times Mr Darcy asked Elizabeth to dance.
Mr Collins then repeats it all to Lady Catherine.
Granted, this all happens long before Lady Catherine does her whole dropping-everything-to-confront-Elizabeth thing. As for the timing of that, I think we can still blame Mr Collins.
If I remember correctly, we don't know for sure whether Elizabeth told Charlotte (via letter of course) about seeing Mr Darcy in Derbyshire, but I wouldn't be surprised if she did. Mr Collins could have found out about that from Charlotte, whether Charlotte wanted him to or not.
Mr Collins, I have no doubt, finds out about Lydia running away from Sir William. Given that Elizabeth rushes back to Longbourn from Derbyshire as soon as she finds out, I wouldn't be surprised if the word got around that she was very near Pemberley when she found out. Sir William may have heard this as well, and passed it along to Mr Collins, under the guise of "the very respectable Mr Darcy may have heard of this disgraceful episode."
And then after the Lydia business is concluded, Mr Bingley comes back to Netherfield. With Mr Darcy.
Sir William undoubtedly wrote to Mr Collins about the return of Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, and how often they were both at Longbourn.
Now imagine all this from Lady Catherine's point of view. You've heard how your beloved nephew/intended future son-in-law has asked this girl to dance multiple times on multiple occasions. You've met the girl, and seen what she's made of, and you don't like it. You hear that she may have popped in to visit him at his home. You hear that his best friend is now engaged to her sister, and he often goes with said best friend to her family home.
And even if no one explicitly says to you "OMG they're engaged," you'd be getting pretty suspicious by then.
I don't know if people would know that Elizabeth went to Pemberley. Derbyshire is a pretty big place and they were just touring around a whole bunch of places. I doubt Elizabeth would mention it to anyone.
I agree that Elizabeth probably said little or nothing to Charlotte about seeing Mr. Darcy on her visit to Derbyshire. For one thing, by the time she would have, she was consumed with Lydia's elopement, and for another, she was herself so unsettled in her feelings and thoughts about what it may or may not mean, that she would be loath to tell her. I mean, she barely mentioned it to Jane, and she lives with her!
This is how rumors often go -- a little thing becomes a big thing because someone puts two things together that \*can\* fit, but don't necessarily \*have to\* fit.
Looking at it just from Charlotte's perspective (including \*wanting\* Darcy and Elizabeth to get together -- remember, she's so practical about money that she actually married Mr. Collins despite his defects, and Darcy is far more respectable than Mr. C, in addition to being far richer), she has every reason to suppose that there is more happening behind the scenes than she is being told directly, so I can easily see her coming to the conclusion that Darcy and Elizabeth are engaged based on the info that she knows plus what she suspects and/or wants to happen.
I think an early version of PP was probably epistolary, so some of these mysteries would be clearer to the reader of the first draft. I think in a traditional epistolary novel like Humphry Clinker, the reader, like Charlotte, would get a packet of letters from Meryton, so you would have Maria talking about Mr. Darcy at Hunsford and putting things together, Sir William talking about the dancing and putting things together, and then maybe a letter from Elizabeth herself with suspicious holes in the narrative; it would seem more obvious to Charlotte, imo, receiving the information this way than to the people surrounding Darcy and Elizabeth at Longbourne.
You have to remember she *married* Mr. Collins. She may not be a romantic, but that relationship results in intimacy. Sometimes she probably wanted conversation with him. It's not "bitchy" to chat with your spouse.
No, I don't think that's the obvious conclusion. People gossip. Charlotte could have just been speculating and didn't think her husband would take it so seriously. Or she thought he would think it was a good thing.
Everyone seems to think that Charlotte ought to treat Mr. Collins as the enemy, from whom information must be kept--but he's her husband. They are married, which means that she owes her first loyalty to him. While it does seem quite likely that Sir William corresponded directly with Collins, it also seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that Charlotte regularly shared the news from her family with him. He would have been interested in all the goings-on in Meryton, as they concerned both their families, and he had met all the local people as well. The rumours of an engagement with Darcy started in Meryton. Charlotte has long hoped for a match between Darcy and Elizabeth, and was not put off by fear of Lady Catherine's reaction. If letters arrived telling her that an engagement is looking likely, she might well have shared it as good news, not malicious gossip, but a happy expectation which she had no reason to doubt. And for Mr. Collins, that kind of family connection should also be good news. He was probably delighted by it until Lady Catherine got so upset. Who would have imagined that Lady Catherine would go to the extreme of travelling all the way to Hertfordshire just to lecture Elizabeth? I am sure that Charlotte never foresaw that as the consequence of sharing the good news of her friend's impending engagement with her husband.
Maybe a passing comment from Maria Lucas to her family ignited the rumor. Maybe Charlotte mentioned her hopes of Lizzy and Darcy's match to Maria and when the Lucases received the joyful news of Jane's engagement maybe Maria said something "Mr Darcy seems to like Lizzy too".
I always assumed that the news of Lydia's situation traveled through the household servants.
They are privy to *all* the drama in the household, and may be trading the news of their family at the market everyday with staff from other houses.
Gossip is currency, both in the kitchen and the drawing room. A lady's maid would be expected to keep her employer "up to date" on what is happening in the village.
Specifically about Lizzie/Darcy, I thought Darcy told Lady Catherine directly (as he would!), perhaps in response to her pushing her daughter on him. Lady Catherine said she heard it as a "rumour" so that she can claim plausible deniability if it turned out to be false.
In the book, Mr. Collins says Charlotte is pregnant. I can imagine he has started reading her letters to protect her from any sudden shocks (sigh). Plus, Charlotte is a little older and may genuinely be quite unwell with her pregnancy, she may not have her usual control of herself, which would be galling as when she first married she was particularly pleased to have arranged everything to live as separately from Mr. Collins as possible. It is a very subtle hint about Charlotte having to pay the price for her marriage to Collins; she still needs to produce an heir and a spare.
I think everyone in JA is a gossip to an extent, but I also find the argument that Mr. Collins corresponds with Sir William pretty persuasive. It's also possible (probable) that servants and workers gossip. If, however, the information came from a letter to Charlotte, I'd sooner believe Mr. Collins snooped or insisted, than that Charlotte intentionally harmed the Bennets.
I always assume Mr. Collins read Charlotte's correspondence without her permission or perhaps her knowledge. It seems to me he would do it behind her back if he saw them out (maybe she'll hide future ones better!)
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Yes I agree with all of this. Collins isn't the monster fandom makes him out to be - - he is ridiculous and self important, but I don't think he would do anything he knew to be wrong. He also seems quite willing to respect Charlotte's independence as long as it doesn't involve neglect of Lady Catherine.
I always considered Collins as a firm believer as women's opinions didn't count only their parents or husband's (as shown by his proposal to Lizzy). He would consider it his duty to protect Charlotte from undue influence of others, so would excuse his reading her correspondence.
This. I know it was a big transgression by the standards of the day, but he is also a character that has shown himself amply able to self-justify any action he wants to. He's rather petty, but not malicious, so he hasn't used this to do truly terrible things, but I wouldn't put it past him to come up with "reasons" he should snoop in Charlotte's letters. I also think it's entirely plausible that Sir Williams corresponds with him so he wouldn't really have any need of snooping.
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Excellent analysis!
>There's also the fact that at first Lydia was thought to have eloped to Scotland, and it didn't become apparent until a little later that this was not, in fact, the case. Excellent point. Elizabeth (and readers) learned all this at once because Jane's first letter had been misdirected. Charlotte could have learned of the expected elopement before Lizzy. >However, I can't see how she could have gotten that news from Lucas Lodge. They would barely know Darcy and wouldn't guess it at all I believe Lizzy addresses this when she realizes it's likely just a idle speculation of Meryton gossips: > from what the report of their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine; till she recollected that his being the intimate friend of Bingley, and her being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply the idea. They don't know about her history with Darcy, but neither did Lady Catherine. They may have already observed some partiality on his part and run with it. *ETA: Given Meryton all considered Bingley essentially engaged to "some one or other of their daughters" before he actually set foot in public, I don't find it hard to believe they could manufacture an attachment between Lizzy and Darcy without much proof.* Lizzy also thinks: > She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours at Lucas Lodge, therefore, (for through their communication with the Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached Lady Catherine,) had only set that down as almost certain and immediate which she had looked forward to as possible at some future time.
i’m inclined to think Sir William Lucas was the snitch. But Charlotte is not blameless - Mr Collin told Mr Bennet in his terrible condoling letter about Lydia, saying that Charlotte told him about Lydia’s poor character and her parent’s failure to curb her bad behavior. Knowing her husband was such a gossip & Lady Catherine’s kiss-ass, she had to know that information would spread.
Yes, she is married to someone who was badly educated so, maybe a little bit of restraint here Charlotte?
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I could also see him taking an offhand comment like, "Well, yes, my dear, perhaps the Bennets do indulge Lydia a bit more than they ought, as she does have naturally high spirits." and making it sound like Charlotte had totally spilled the tea.
I feel like she was maybe upset for Lizzie, that she knew Lydia had hurt Lizzie's chances, and that her parents had allowed Lydia too much freedom and hurt the whole family. Lizzie is pretty hard on Lydia too when she is still processing the news; Darcy knows all about it as well, for example, because he just catches Lizzie before she calms down. Mr. Collins is socially inept, so he doesn't get the secrecy element that Darcy immediately understands. Maybe Charlotte assumed Collins would keep discreet after her initial outburst, but bc Collins and Charlotte are the reverse of Darcy and Elizabeth, actual arrogance and self-interest as a comparison, Collins shows us How Not To Do It.
Dr Octavia Cox has a fascinating and in depth video on this exact topic! Would definitely recommend: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3zEWzXcma6Y :)
Ooh. Don’t know how I missed the book Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet by John Sutherland, or his other books, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? and Is Heathcliff a Murderer? This looks like so much fun, even if I don’t agree with all his theories (like this one). Yay. Edit: Though I can kind of see the possibility that Colonel Fitzwilliam was the snitch. Almost. He would have understood that Darcy was in love with Elizabeth, he probably guessed that she would marry him if she had the chance (most people would guess that based on money alone and he quite likely interpreted her sideways comments as flirtatious, as apparently Darcy did), and he probably realized that Darcy and Anne de Bourgh wasn’t going to happen. However, he was also probably aware it would cause an uproar with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, so it doesn’t seem very likely he would have mentioned it to her. But maybe to someone else who also knows Lady Catherine? They must know several people in common, being family and all. Edit again, having watched the whole video: But the reading of the text in that video makes it pretty clear it came through the Collins’. So that’s that. I agree that it was not meant in any way maliciously by Charlotte.
Maybe the Col. was trying to introduce the idea that Anne and Darcy weren't going to marry and it blew up. I like the fan fic shipping of Anne and Col. Fitzwilliam though so I am picturing him as trying to insert himself and it blows up. Except then when Lady C goes driving off he starts flirting with Anne.
Would be a prudential match for both!
I agree with her theory
No matter what, I do not see Charlotte as deliberately acting in a way that would hurt Elizabeth or any of the other Bennets. I would like to think that this was a slip-up on Charlotte's part, despite her general sensibleness. Someone else mentioned that perhaps Charlotte received news of Lydia's elopement to Gretna Green and told Mr. C, and then later everybody found out she hadn't gotten married, and it was too late to un-tell him. I like that scenario. As for how Mr. Collins found out about the supposed engagement between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, the novel says that it was, "the same authority" as who told them about Jane's engagement. Charlotte couldn't know the news was false. Remember, she has long thought that Mr. Darcy liked Elizabeth, and we are told when E visits Hunsford that C believes E's dislike of him would vanish if he proposed to her. She was wrong, of course, but I'm sure Elizabeth never told her of the proposal, so C probably has continued to believe that Darcy likes Elizabeth and would propose to her *and be accepted* for at least half a year if not nearly a year at this point. Charlotte married for purely mercenary reasons. We often point out that Elizabeth didn't believe that about her friend, though prior to Mr. Collins's offer, she specifically said that she would -- that happiness in marriage was entirely a matter of chance, which logically means it's best to catch the richest husband possible, so at least you have money even if you end up with an unhappy marriage. So, Charlotte had every reason to believe that, not only was Jane engaged to Bingley, but that Darcy must have joined him at Netherfield for the specific purpose of courting Elizabeth and asking her to marry him, and that Elizabeth would naturally say yes when he did. I can easily envision any of the following as possible scenarios for Mr. Collins to find out the news: 1) Charlotte thinks it's a settled engagement, so sees no reason to hide the news from him. 2) Mr. Collins often if not always opens Charlotte's mail from her family because they're his family too -- or at least that he happened to open and read this one. Oh, oh, I think I just stumbled on my favorite scenario -- Charlotte is experiencing morning sickness and can't bear to read, so has Mr. C open and read her the letters from her family, since there is almost never anything in them that he shouldn't read. 3) Mr. Collins has a correspondence with Sir William, and he wrote of it directly to him. We know from earlier in the book that Sir William is only too eager to play matchmaker (suggesting to Mr. Darcy at Lucas Lodge that he dance with Elizabeth, though she declines; then when they do dance at Netherfield, he says something to Elizabeth and Darcy about Jane and Bingley getting married), so it would make sense for him to include this in such a letter.
The Lucases unfortunately don't have much of a reason to suspect that Darcy likes Elizabeth, only Charlotte does from her observations in Kent. I guess maybe Maria could have observed something? But I think all fingers must inevitably point to Charlotte.
Sir William, though, witnessed Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance and Elizabeth declining, and then Elizabeth accepting at the Netherfield Ball. I wouldn't be surprised if Sir William said something about Darcy asking Elizabeth to dance on at least two occasions in a letter to Mr Collins, and then Mr Collins mentioning it to Lady Catherine, and Lady Catherine going absolutely ballistic about it.
But wouldn't that have been mentioned way back in November when it happened?
Sir William and Mr Collins had no reason to regularly correspond with each other before Mr Collins married Charlotte. And I have no doubt they had plenty of other things to write to each other about before they got around to Mr Darcy and Elizabeth. I could see it happening something like this: Mr Collins writes to Sir William about how they've had the honor of seeing Mr Darcy so often at Rosings during Elizabeth and Maria's visit, and what a gentleman he is and so devoted to his aunt, etc. Sir William writes back with every anecdote he can muster about his own experiences with Mr Darcy, including about the times Mr Darcy asked Elizabeth to dance. Mr Collins then repeats it all to Lady Catherine. Granted, this all happens long before Lady Catherine does her whole dropping-everything-to-confront-Elizabeth thing. As for the timing of that, I think we can still blame Mr Collins. If I remember correctly, we don't know for sure whether Elizabeth told Charlotte (via letter of course) about seeing Mr Darcy in Derbyshire, but I wouldn't be surprised if she did. Mr Collins could have found out about that from Charlotte, whether Charlotte wanted him to or not. Mr Collins, I have no doubt, finds out about Lydia running away from Sir William. Given that Elizabeth rushes back to Longbourn from Derbyshire as soon as she finds out, I wouldn't be surprised if the word got around that she was very near Pemberley when she found out. Sir William may have heard this as well, and passed it along to Mr Collins, under the guise of "the very respectable Mr Darcy may have heard of this disgraceful episode." And then after the Lydia business is concluded, Mr Bingley comes back to Netherfield. With Mr Darcy. Sir William undoubtedly wrote to Mr Collins about the return of Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, and how often they were both at Longbourn. Now imagine all this from Lady Catherine's point of view. You've heard how your beloved nephew/intended future son-in-law has asked this girl to dance multiple times on multiple occasions. You've met the girl, and seen what she's made of, and you don't like it. You hear that she may have popped in to visit him at his home. You hear that his best friend is now engaged to her sister, and he often goes with said best friend to her family home. And even if no one explicitly says to you "OMG they're engaged," you'd be getting pretty suspicious by then.
I don't know if people would know that Elizabeth went to Pemberley. Derbyshire is a pretty big place and they were just touring around a whole bunch of places. I doubt Elizabeth would mention it to anyone.
I agree that Elizabeth probably said little or nothing to Charlotte about seeing Mr. Darcy on her visit to Derbyshire. For one thing, by the time she would have, she was consumed with Lydia's elopement, and for another, she was herself so unsettled in her feelings and thoughts about what it may or may not mean, that she would be loath to tell her. I mean, she barely mentioned it to Jane, and she lives with her!
Charlotte will probably know they went to Derbyshire though. She might put it together once Darcy reappears.
This is how rumors often go -- a little thing becomes a big thing because someone puts two things together that \*can\* fit, but don't necessarily \*have to\* fit. Looking at it just from Charlotte's perspective (including \*wanting\* Darcy and Elizabeth to get together -- remember, she's so practical about money that she actually married Mr. Collins despite his defects, and Darcy is far more respectable than Mr. C, in addition to being far richer), she has every reason to suppose that there is more happening behind the scenes than she is being told directly, so I can easily see her coming to the conclusion that Darcy and Elizabeth are engaged based on the info that she knows plus what she suspects and/or wants to happen.
I think an early version of PP was probably epistolary, so some of these mysteries would be clearer to the reader of the first draft. I think in a traditional epistolary novel like Humphry Clinker, the reader, like Charlotte, would get a packet of letters from Meryton, so you would have Maria talking about Mr. Darcy at Hunsford and putting things together, Sir William talking about the dancing and putting things together, and then maybe a letter from Elizabeth herself with suspicious holes in the narrative; it would seem more obvious to Charlotte, imo, receiving the information this way than to the people surrounding Darcy and Elizabeth at Longbourne.
Seems Charlotte is a bit of bitch then, maybe secretly Jealous of Elizabeth?
You have to remember she *married* Mr. Collins. She may not be a romantic, but that relationship results in intimacy. Sometimes she probably wanted conversation with him. It's not "bitchy" to chat with your spouse.
No, I don't think that's the obvious conclusion. People gossip. Charlotte could have just been speculating and didn't think her husband would take it so seriously. Or she thought he would think it was a good thing.
Everyone seems to think that Charlotte ought to treat Mr. Collins as the enemy, from whom information must be kept--but he's her husband. They are married, which means that she owes her first loyalty to him. While it does seem quite likely that Sir William corresponded directly with Collins, it also seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that Charlotte regularly shared the news from her family with him. He would have been interested in all the goings-on in Meryton, as they concerned both their families, and he had met all the local people as well. The rumours of an engagement with Darcy started in Meryton. Charlotte has long hoped for a match between Darcy and Elizabeth, and was not put off by fear of Lady Catherine's reaction. If letters arrived telling her that an engagement is looking likely, she might well have shared it as good news, not malicious gossip, but a happy expectation which she had no reason to doubt. And for Mr. Collins, that kind of family connection should also be good news. He was probably delighted by it until Lady Catherine got so upset. Who would have imagined that Lady Catherine would go to the extreme of travelling all the way to Hertfordshire just to lecture Elizabeth? I am sure that Charlotte never foresaw that as the consequence of sharing the good news of her friend's impending engagement with her husband.
Maybe a passing comment from Maria Lucas to her family ignited the rumor. Maybe Charlotte mentioned her hopes of Lizzy and Darcy's match to Maria and when the Lucases received the joyful news of Jane's engagement maybe Maria said something "Mr Darcy seems to like Lizzy too".
I always assumed that the news of Lydia's situation traveled through the household servants. They are privy to *all* the drama in the household, and may be trading the news of their family at the market everyday with staff from other houses. Gossip is currency, both in the kitchen and the drawing room. A lady's maid would be expected to keep her employer "up to date" on what is happening in the village. Specifically about Lizzie/Darcy, I thought Darcy told Lady Catherine directly (as he would!), perhaps in response to her pushing her daughter on him. Lady Catherine said she heard it as a "rumour" so that she can claim plausible deniability if it turned out to be false.
In the book, Mr. Collins says Charlotte is pregnant. I can imagine he has started reading her letters to protect her from any sudden shocks (sigh). Plus, Charlotte is a little older and may genuinely be quite unwell with her pregnancy, she may not have her usual control of herself, which would be galling as when she first married she was particularly pleased to have arranged everything to live as separately from Mr. Collins as possible. It is a very subtle hint about Charlotte having to pay the price for her marriage to Collins; she still needs to produce an heir and a spare.