Exciting News About Sanditon!

Andrew Davies, the screenwriter behind the famous 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, is to create a new version of Jane Austen's last, unfinished novel Sanditon for ITV and PBS Masterpiece.
This will be very interesting to watch as Davies will be able to make up his own ending! Filming is expected to begin some time next year.
Even though Jane was writing Sanditon when she was extremely poorly, there are some wonderful touches of humour in her novel set in the seaside. We can only imagine what the final novel would have looked like - what an immense loss. You can see facsimiles of Jane Austen's original manuscript of Sanditon here.
Illustration courtesy the Library of Congress.

Mr Darcy Is Coming! Planning A Special Dinner

Mrs Elton with her housekeeper.

When planning a dinner or card party, hostesses set aside part of the day to organise menus with their housekeeper or cook. Emma’s new bride, Mrs Elton, complained: ‘I believe I was half an hour this morning shut up with my housekeeper.’ 

Mrs Elton and her pearls.

If only one course was served, the company was told ‘You see your dinner’ when they sat down to dine. But for a special dinner party, at least two courses were provided. When Pride and Prejudice’s Mrs Bennet invited Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy to a family dinner at Longbourn, she, ‘did not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a year.’

Perkins, 'Every Woman Her Own Housekeeper'.

All the dishes for the first course were placed on the table at the same time. Then the serving dishes were ‘removed’ for the second course, which was arranged in a similar fashion. Guests ate a little of what they fancy from the dishes closest to them, perhaps asking a servant to pass them a favourite dish, if wanted, from the far end of the table.

'The gentlemen did approach'.

Genteel hostesses dressed smartly though not over-grand, so that their guests did not feel inferior if only modestly attired; but for dinner parties, ladies and gentlemen normally wore full evening dress.

Images:

Charles Brock coloured illustrations for Emma, and black and white illustration for Pride and Prejudice, courtesy of Mollands.

A sample 3 course dinner for the month of March. John Perkins, Every Woman Her Own House-keeper, (London, 1796). Courtesy Google Books.

Popping The Question

Mr Collins proposes to Charlotte Lucas.

For a Regency lady, marriage is ‘the only honourable provision for well-educated women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want’ (Pride and Prejudice).  So a marriage proposal from an eligible suitor is one of the most important moments of a young lady’s life.

Lizzy accepts Mr Darcy.

Common prudence dictates that you choose a partner with whom you can respect and esteem.  In Pride & Prejudice, Mr Bennet is extremely worried when Elizabeth tells him that Mr Darcy has proposed: ‘I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior.  Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage.  You could scarcely escape discredit and misery’.

If all goes well, you’ll receive a proposal from an eligible young man in your first season.  If no-one suitable makes an offer after your first few seasons, you’ll be nearing the ‘years of danger’ like Elizabeth Elliott in Persuasion.

Capt.Wentworth gives Anne a letter.

Mr Knightley and Emma.

Every gentleman has his own way of declaring his love.  Mr Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet is passionate but unflattering: ‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you’.  Darcy does not recommend his suit when he declares that their marriage will be a ‘degradation’ and speaks of ‘the inferiority of your connections’.

So Elizabeth was puzzled how to accept Mr Darcy’s second proposal of marriage. She ‘immediately, but not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change...as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances’.

How should you say ‘Yes’?  when asked? When Mr Knightley proposed to Emma Woodhouse, she said ‘Just what she ought, of course.  A lady always does’.  

Illustrations courtesy of the elegant and erudite Molland’s website.

Morning Visits

Darcy and Georgiana visit Lizzy.

Morning visits were a very important part of a Regency lady or Austen heroine's day. After breakfast ladies went shopping or made ‘morning’ visits until dinner, which could be late in the afternoon.If the family you were visiting were out (or ‘denied’ by the servant), you left a visiting card. In Sense & Sensibility, when Elinor and Marianne stayed in town with Mrs Jennings, they knew that Edward Ferrars had arrived in London because: ‘Twice was his card found on the table, when they returned from their morning engagements’. Morning visitors were received in the drawing room and offered refreshments. In Pride & Prejudice, when Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt paid a morning call to Miss Darcy at Pemberley, they were treated to ‘cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the finest fruits in season’.

Ladies wore ‘half-dress’ or ‘morning’ dress for paying morning visits and going shopping. Morning or ‘walking’ dresses (circa 1800) usually had long sleeves. Men like Beau Brummell usually wore a beautifully-cut blue morning coat with brass buttons, a light-coloured waistcoat, buckskins, a crisply starched cravat, and top-boots. Ackermann’s Repository for April 1809 reported that ‘dark blue, olive, and bottle green’ coats with ‘silver and gilt basket buttons’ were fashionable for dress and morning coats. On the morning of her marriage to George Wickham, flighty Lydia Bennet (Pride & Prejudice) ‘longed to know whether he would be married in his blue coat’.

Illustrations:

Mr Darcy and his sister Georgiana pay a morning visit to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. C.E.Brock illustration courtesy of the wonderful Molland’s website.

Morning dress, Lady’s Monthly Museum fashion plate, December 1798. Author’s collection.

Full dress and walking dress, Lady’s Monthly Museum fashion plate, January 1805. Author’s collection.