The Pen Mightier Than The Pelisse?

In Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, Anne Elliot seemingly mourns the disparity between women’s and men’s education, and women’s lack of representation in history and the arts: ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands’.

But in an age when society believed that a girl’s ultimate ambition should be a wife and mother, an increasing number of women (like Austen herself) took up their pens in the hope of earning some money of their own. In a letter to her brother Frank Austen in 1813, she told him of the success of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility: ‘I have now therefore written myself into £250 –which only makes me long for more' (worth approximately £16,000 in today's money).

Over the next few blog posts, I’ll be taking a look at some of Austen’s predecessors and contemporaries who created a fresh role for themselves in society as authors. However, to avoid society's censure, like Austen, they often wrote under a cloak of anonymity. 

Frontispiece of a French edition of Persuasion, Jane Austen's 'La Famille Elliot' (1821) courtesy Wikimedia Commons. 

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.

A Regency Kissing Game!

If you attended a private party in Jane Austen's England, the fun was not necessarily confined to dancing, wining and dining. You might take your chances at whist, or enjoy a 'nice comfortable noisy game of lottery tickets' (as at Mrs Philips' home in Pride & Prejudice), or play some parlour games. If you lost when playing a game, you would be asked to pay a forfeit.
A lady might be asked to 'kiss a candlestick' held up high by a gentleman; when she tried to kiss it, the gentleman could steal the kiss for himself. 'Le Baiser a la Capucine' (kiss of the monkey) was more complicated. The gentleman and lady knelt on the floor, back to back, and had to try and kiss each other. Somehow one can't imagine the stately Mr Darcy performing Le Baiser.
If a lady was asked to 'kiss the person you love best without any one else knowing it', she would be kissed by several gentlemen in the room - a real penance if one of them was Mr Collins!

Le Baiser a la Capucine, engraving by Schenker, Le Bon Genre, c.1814. Author's collection.

A Visit To Carlton House

Pride & Prejudice’s Mr Darcy could not ‘comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these’. In 1815, Jane Austen was given a personal invitation to visit one of the most splendid libraries in Britain, which belonged to the Prince Regent. The Prince was a noted patron of the arts and literature and loved Austen’s work.  

At this time, Jane was helping nurse her brother Henry through a nasty illness when one of his doctors, who also attended the Prince Regent, realized that Jane was the author of Pride & Prejudice. One day he told Jane that the Prince ‘often’ read her novels’ and ‘kept a set in every one of his residences’.  Accordingly he had informed the Prince she was in London.  His royal highness asked the librarian of Carlton House, James Stanier Clarke, to call on her. 

Clarke duly appeared the next day and invited Jane to Carlton House, so that he could show her ‘the library and other apartments, and pay her every possible attention’. Although Jane disapproved of the Prince Regent’s immoral lifestyle, she felt unable to turn down this high honour.  During her visit, Clarke told her that the Prince had given her permission to dedicate her next novel (Emma) to him, and upon publication, Austen’s publisher John Murray sent the Prince a handsome copy of Emma for his library. Clarke and Jane had a very funny correspondence in which he sent her a series of suggestions for her next work.

Carlton House was the Prince’s primary London residence from about 1783 onwards. Sadly, it was knocked down in the late 1820s as Prinny (now George IV) wanted Buckingham House to be revamped into a splendid new royal residence – now Buckingham Palace. However, you can see some lovely colour images of Carlton House here on Patrick Baty’s website.

Images:

The Prince Regent, 1822. Engraving by William Darton.

Tom and Jerry visit the Throne Room in Carlton House. It had crimson velvet drapes ornamented with gold-lace fringes, and its splendid carpet was made in England, at Spitalfields. Engraving by George and Robert Cruikshank, Life in London, Pierce Egan, (John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, 1869.)

The front of Carlton House, and the Grand Staircase, Old and New London Vol. IV, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1878).

All images from the author’s collection.

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.