Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (64 page)

For summer, the breeches would be cut the same, but made of stout pale or white linen or nankeen, a heavy twilled cotton.

Just as important was a gentleman’s fitted waistcoat, which would have been made of white or skin-toned fabric—the idea being that if a gentleman were to remove his coat, in his shirtsleeves and from a distance, he would resemble nothing so much as a naked Greek god, muscular, beautiful, carved from marble or stone.

Coats were now made of dark matte fabrics such as wool Bath cloth or “superfine”, sculpted through the back and shoulders, with a high collar to provide a contrasting frame to the whiteness of the starched cravats. Our Mr. Darcy has several specialist tailors from whose work to choose: John Weston’s at No. 34 Old Bond Street, or even Mr. Brummell’s favourite, Schweitzer & Davidson on Cork Street.

Beneath it all, the shirt of white linen, plain and lightly starched, with collars
“so large that, before being folded down, it completely hid
[the]
head and face...”
with tiny buttons at the neck and cuffs. Cuffs were worn long—a good inch or two longer than the coat sleeve to emphasise the fact that the gentleman did not work.

About Mr. Darcy’s neck was his starched cravat.

Made of fine Irish muslin, a triangle was cut on the diagonal from a square yard of fabric, with its edges plainly stitched. This triangle was then folded twice and wrapped carefully about the neck, with the ends tied in one of several manners before the wearer lowered his chin to create a neat series of folds which were either rubbed into place by a day-old shirt or pressed with a hot iron. (I favour the day-old shirt method myself...less danger of frying the larynx.)

Footwear? Highly polished Hessian boots with spurs by day and thinly-soled black pumps for evening.

Underwear? Very little was worn and then only rarely—it being pretty much a thing of the 18th century, although it was still in use (in cold weather, for example) and referred to as “summer trousers”. In this look of careless, casual, sensual arrogance, there was no room for lumpy knickers or rucked up shirt tails. However, due to the transparency and cut of the tight kneebreeches and pantaloons, a lining of either flannel or cotton was sometimes incorporated into the garments.

Mr. Darcy would have dressed some three or four times during the course of a normal day.

He would also have required, per week, in addition to the usual
“20 shirts, 24 pocket handkerchiefs, 9 or 10 summer trousers, 30 neck handkerchiefs, a dozen waistcoats, and stockings at discretion”
, a chintz dressing gown and Turkish slippers for taking his breakfast.

He would also have several driving coats and/or greatcoats, caped, and made of a heavier wool worsted or “Norwich stuff” for colder, rainier weather (every day from September to May and most of June).

Like Brummell and other gentlemen of his class and station, Darcy would have bathed every part of his body every day, and in hot water. He would have used no perfumes (they were considered very 18th century!) but would have smelled instead of very fine linen and country washing.

So there he is—drab greatcoat emphasising the width of his shoulders, thigh-hugging doeskin breeches, pale waistcoat, dark coat (navy, grey, or black being the preferred colours), and pristine white cravat and collarpoints outlining the strength of his jaw. Polished Hessians are on his feet.

Does he not look fine? Every inch a god?

So now...let’s take it off.

His high-crowned bevor, his cane, his gloves, and his greatcoat he has, fortunately, left with the footman belowstairs. The door is shut.

His boots (with or without horse muck on them) have been left at the door or really anywhere but in the bedchamber, if at all possible. There are two reasons for this. One, this may be a good idea at a time when there are no Dysons or Hoovers. But also, the method of removing one’s boots generally required the backside of another person, and gentlemen didn’t much care for bootjacks as it was said to break down the back of the boot. Equally, the reason a gentleman did not
“sit down in all his dirt”
was a pungent one.

So shoes are a better bet. Easier to slip off.

And it all starts this way: with the the kissing...this could go on for a long time. A very long time. Because the most important thing is always that his Eliza feels and knows that her wishes and desires are paramount to his.

Then, the coat comes off. It’s easier, I’ll be frank, if she’ll slips her hands upward from his chest toward his shoulders and lifts it away from him. But assuming she’s not forward and that he doesn’t have his coats cut so as to make removing them akin to peeling an obstreperous orange, he shrugs the thing off, first one shoulder, then the other, all the while still kissing her.

Then, the waistcoat. Button by tiny button. All eleven or so of the things. More than that if the waistcoat is double-breasted. And with each button, a sensation of incremental yet greater sensual liberty is attained.

The waistcoat now on the floor with the coat, Darcy slides his index finger into the front of that knot of white linen at the base of the throat and pulls. An index finger into the remaining tied-bit and pulls. And freedom. And the end of the cravat is yanked and pulled off and discarded onto the floor.

Then he takes down his braces, first one, then the other.

And finally, he undoes the small Dorset buttons at his neck and cuffs. But being not a little impatient, he pulls the shirt off over his head without unbuttoning it all the way.

But the removal of the shirt only happens when she wishes it to happen. For all the time, his removal of his clothes is secondary to touching her, kissing her, telling her in every wordless way that her beauty blocks out the sky and the stars and is all that he sees.

And that’s how he did it.

“To teach thee, I am naked first...”

—John Donne

Unrequited Love: Jane Austen and America

by Lauren Gilbert

J
ane Austen had little to say about America, and that little was not good. In her letter to Martha Lloyd on September 2, 1814, she did not reflect a positive view of the new United States, writing
“…I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.”

The ideals of democracy espoused by America, and later in the French Revolution, were a more direct and positive influence on earlier authors with whom Jane was familiar such as Edmund Burke and Charlotte Turner Smith, but suffered an eclipse when, in France, the Terror erupted and the King and Queen were executed.

Park Honan wrote that, in
The Loiterer
, Jane’s brother James printed a story reflecting the Tory view of France and America, in which a Scottish soldier fighting against Washington becomes a democratic fool, loses his values, marries a rich, vicious, mean-born widow, and becomes miserable, ruined by the American Revolution. There is a strong probability that Jane would have read the story.

Austen’s novels reflect a more prudent Tory approach to advancement than the Scottish soldier in question pursued: her heroines who made advantageous marriages and the men who advanced clearly have worth of their own in terms of character—but also in terms of birth. In
Pride and Prejudice
, Elizabeth Bennet was a “gentleman’s daughter”, so her marriage to Mr. Darcy was not totally inappropriate. In
Mansfield Park
, Fanny and William Price’s mother was Lady Bertram’s sister, so there was good blood there (however diluted) to supplement their individual merits. In spite of Emma’s improvements, Harriet (born, as we come to discover, the illegitimate daughter of a tradesman) was matched appropriately with the farmer Mr. Martin, and her friendship with Emma evolved into a more suitable relationship.

The War of 1812 (the circumstance under discussion in the letter previously cited) would have been a concern but does not make an appearance in her novels (as with so many other politically-charged events of her time). But it seems clear that America was a negative influence in the world, in Austen’s view. She tended to uphold the more traditional values and structures currently in place in England, even while she makes her concerns about women’s role and place in those structures apparent.

In considering the West Indies as part of the Americas, the situation and viewpoint are somewhat different but not more favorable. The combination of the West Indies and trade were directly allied to slavery. Her aunt Leigh-Perrot brought a plantation in Barbados with her when she married Jane’s uncle. Austen’s father, George Austen, was a trustee for a plantation owned by James Nibbs, a former classmate. Austen’s brother Charles’ naval career included five years in the North American Station, searching ships and interfering with trade between France and the United States. Charles married Fanny Palmer, the daughter of an official in Bermuda while stationed in the West Indies.

The issues of slavery and income mentioned in
Mansfield Park
would have had a great deal of immediacy for her family, as discussions of plantation business matters, including slavery, would have been fairly common. Austen’s disgust for slavery was made apparent, however discreetly, by the references in
Mansfield Park
, previously mentioned, as well as in
Emma
.

In
Emma
, Austen’s character Jane Fairfax referred to her role as a governess as a form of slavery of the mind, if not the body, and was extremely reluctant to embark on her career. Even the reference to Mrs. Elton’s family in Bristol with wealth coming from trade has a dark connotation, due to Bristol having been a significant port involved with the slave trade. (The slave trade was outlawed in 1807, but slave ownership in the British Empire was still legal, during Austen’s lifetime.)

I was unable to find any positive references to the Americas in Jane Austen’s letters or novels. Even though Austen’s novels carry a subtle undertone of the injustices to women in the current English system, the democratic ideals that led to the American and French revolutions clearly did not resonate with her. There is no indication she espoused the radical transformation of her society.

While bearing in mind that the letters remaining are a fraction of what she had written, available information indicates that Austen viewed the Americas as a dangerously radical, unreligious place where people of low birth and poor character could be advanced socially and materially, in spite of their unworthiness. Given the fairly recent loss of the colonies and subsequent revolution and Terror in France, a jaundiced view of America by Austen and her contemporaries would not be unreasonable or surprising. One can only hope that subsequent developments would have found favor with her, especially in view of the continuing popularity of her novels here.

Sources

Ellwood, Gracia Fay. “‘Such a Dead Silence’: Cultural Evil, Challenge, Deliberate Evil and Metanoia in
Mansfield Park
.”
Persuasions On-Line,
vol. 24, no. 1 (2003).
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol24no1/ellwood.html
.

Honan, Park.
Jane Austen: Her Life
. New York: Ballantine Books Edition, 1989.

Hubback, J. H. and Edith C.
Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers.
http://www.tilneysandtrapdoors.com/mollands/etexts/jasb/jasb7.html
.

LeFaye, Deirdre.
Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels
. London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, 2002.

_________, ed.
Jane Austen’s Letters
, Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

MacDonagh, Oliver.
Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds
. Avon, UK: 1991.

Mitton, G. E.
Jane Austen and Her Times, 1775-1817
. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2007.

Ray, Joan Kilingel, PhD.
Jane Austen for Dummies
. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2006.

Sheehan, Colleen A. “To Govern the Winds: Dangerous Acquaintances at Mansfield Park.”
Persuasions On-Line,
vol. 25, no. 1 (2004).
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol25no1/sheehan.html
.

Tomalin, Claire.
Jane Austen: A Life
. New York: First Vintage Books Edition, division of Random House, 1999.

Class Distinctions in Regency England

By Philippa Jane Keyworth

T
oday I want to write about a well-known primary source,
The Mirror of Graces,
by A Lady of Distinction. This book was first published in London in 1811, and, presumably due to its popularity, it was subsequently re-printed in New York in 1813 and 1815, in Edinburgh in 1830 and then again in Boston in 1831.

The copy that I own is an enlarged photo-reprint and spans some 239 pages or more. At such a length, I can hardly say that this article will cover the entirety of the book or will be a full analysis of the source. However, I wanted to share a little something about this captivating text which I am currently studying.

Specifically, I have been drawn to the passage entitled “On the Peculiarities of Dress, with Reference to the Station of the Wearer”. It strikes me that when reading a Regency romance and even when writing one, we tend to focus on the positives of class divides. Who can resist a classic
Pride and Prejudice
-esque storyline that follows the romantic attachment of a man and woman divided by class who eventually overcome it?

What we sometimes fail to see is, as John Tosh describes it,
“The gulf between past and present.”
We don’t give complete gravity to the social divides of the time and instead we romanticize them. In truth, while reading this passage from
The Mirror of Graces
, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to frown in comprehension. The peculiarities of dress A Lady of Distinction refers to are the fashions of the time, and she sets us straight from the beginning by describing the danger of lower and middle classes dressing fashionably:

It is not from a proud wish to confine elegance to persons of quality that I contend for less extravagant habits in the middle and lower orders of people: it is a conviction of the evil which their vanity produces that impels me to condemn in toto the present levelling and expensive mode.

And before this statement of her conviction she declares the propriety of corresponding your dress with not only your season of life, character, and figure but also with your station. She speaks of this matter so: “
This is the subject not less of moral concern than it is a matter of taste.”

Yes, that’s right, you’ve got it. She believes that dressing for your station is not just about taste but actually your moral obligation. Well, doesn’t this just put a new spin on the classical fashions of the Regency!

She differentiates between tradesmen and those with “fortunes of princes”. Of course, for those with “fortunes of princes” it is different. They are allowed to array their “fair partner”‘ in “rich produce”, but not so for the tradesmen: “
...but I animadvert on our retail shopkeepers, our linen drapers, upholsterers, &c. who, not content with gold and silver baubles, trick out their dames in jewels!”