The Jane Austen Handbook (8 page)

• 
Employ your servants to best advantage
. You have hired a trustworthy nurse; let her assist you. Wean the infant after three months and turn it over to her so you can attend to your other duties.

• 
Keep them in the country as much as possible
. Children need room to run about and play, and in fine weather fresh air is good for a child.

• 
Employ the latest educational methods
. Read
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel
Émile
and
John Locke’s book
Some Thoughts on Education
for advice. Children are naturally good, and their spirits should be allowed to develop naturally and not repressed.

• 
Instill good principles
. Teach them pride in their position in society, but teach them the duties that come with it: caring for those less fortunate and maintaining the family property for the next generation.

• 
Encourage their creativity
. Give them books to read, paper upon which to draw, and blank books in which to write stories.

• 
Do not allow them to be idle
. Keep them busy, even with play or active pursuits, for idleness leads to ignorance. Do not force a child to apply herself to a subject she does not wish to study, such as music lessons—find another activity to take its place.

• 
Give them treats
. If all else fails, liberal slices of cake solve many child-rearing problems.

“I think there are few places with such society as Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours.”
—M
ISS
B
ATES IN
E
MMA

• 
Look after the poor and sick
. Ensure that they have enough food and warm clothing. Give them advice and provide a good example.

• 
Assist young people with vocational matters
. Use your connections to find a place for a young person in need of a position as a governess or maidservant. If the young person refuses your help, accept her decision gracefully; surely she has a good reason for it.

• 
Use your resources to spare others trouble
. Offer your carriage to ladies in need of a ride on the night of a ball or dinner party. If you are passing by a neighbor’s house, stop and inquire if you can perform any service for them, especially if they are housebound. If you will be traveling and a neighbor has a friend in the area, offer to carry a letter or package to save postage costs.

• 
Do not gossip about your neighbors
. When they are having family troubles, keeping silent on the matter is probably the best thing you can do for them.

• 
Remind others to look after their health
. Teach the young ladies under your purview that a little daily exercise and efforts to help the poor will serve them better than putting on sickly airs and lying about on sofas.

• 
Play Cupid
. Invite the young people of the neighborhood over for an evening of card games and a bit of hot supper. If you are going to town for a time, take a young neighbor with you and make sure she gets to the assemblies to meet young men.

• 
Give good advice where it is needed
. If a young neighbor is prepared to throw herself away on a half-pay officer or someone equally undesirable, impress upon her the foolishness of such behavior and how she will regret disobliging her family.

“We have entirely done with the whole Medical Tribe. We have consulted Physician after Physician in vain, till we are quite convinced that they can do nothing for us & that we must trust to our own knowledge of our own wretched Constitutions for any relief.”
—D
IANA
P
ARKER IN
S
ANDITON

• 
Bleeding
. Releasing an excess of blood is an excellent treatment for fevers and headaches. Leeches can be purchased at the apothecary; simply attach a leech to the affected area and remove it once it is swollen. One might forgo the leeches and cut open the patient’s vein instead, allowing blood to flow until the patient swoons for best effect.

• 
Laxatives and emetics
. An excess of bile can be treated with various plants and tinctures that help to purge the body. Better out than in!

• 
Taking the water
. The warm, mineral-laden waters that gush from springs in Bath, Cheltenham, and other spa towns act as a laxative, purging one’s system of excess bile while the minerals replenish the body. If one is unable to
walk to the pump room, one can engage a sedan chair to carry one there. For some maladies, bathing in the water is more effective than drinking it.

• 
Laudanum
. Tincture of opium can help to relieve pain or calm a nervous complaint. Slip a little into a colicky baby’s milk; put a drop or two into your tea if your nerves (or children) are plaguing you; put in a few drops more if you are in real pain.

• 
Amputation
. When wounds become septic, as they so often do, there is nothing else to be done but to remove the limb. One sees this often in military and naval men; in the heat of battle, surgeons overwhelmed with wounded do not have time for more delicate treatments.

OF MEDICAL MEN

During the Regency period, there were three types of medical men to consult if one was not feeling at all the thing.

Physician:
As a gentleman, he was unable to touch the patient or do anything active on the patient’s behalf—gentlemen, after all, did not work.
Physicians were educated at one of the universities and then attended medical school or trained with another physician.

Surgeon:
Surgeons generally had no university degree but trained by dissecting corpses obtained from a “resurrection man” (grave robber) or from the gallows. They set bones, performed amputations, and treated other traumatic injuries but were never to be considered gentlemen.

Apothecary:
Apothecaries dispensed drugs prescribed by a physician; some people preferred to cut out the middleman and consulted their apothecary directly for advice on diet and medicine. In country villages, the apothecary was often the only local source of medical advice.

HYPOCHONDRIACS IN JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS

Mary Musgrove in
Persuasion
:
Queen Whiner of the Austen oeuvre, Mary complains of illness mostly in a desperate bid for attention from her husband and in-laws. Mary’s sore throats, you know, are always worse than anybody’s!

Mrs. Churchill in
Emma
:
It is hard to tell if Mrs. Churchill was really ill or just seeking attention, but she certainly used her ailments to keep her nephew Frank dancing in attendance. She was probably as astonished as anyone else when she actually died.

Mrs. Bennet in
Pride and Prejudice
:
Mrs. Bennet constantly complains about her “nerves” and takes to her bed when Lydia runs away with Wickham, though her immediate recovery upon word of Lydia’s impending marriage renders her initial indisposition suspicious.

Anne deBourgh in
Pride and Prejudice
:
Anne is described as “thin and sickly,” but one wonders if she (or her overbearing mother) uses her unspecified illnesses to give her an excuse to be average.

Diana, Susan, and Arthur Parker in
Sanditon
:
The portrayal of the three hypochondriac Parker siblings is some of the most savagely funny satire in any Austen novel and is especially compelling when one realizes that Jane Austen wrote it as she was suffering from the illness that would kill her only a few months later.

It was a quick succession of busy nothings
. —
M
ANSFIELD
P
ARK

• 
Music
. Constant practice is necessary if one is to excel; two hours a day at one’s instrument is optimal. Most genteel families have a pianoforte in their house, so if you concentrate on that instrument you will be able to perform for others most frequently. You may have to invite others to your home to hear you play upon the harp, unless you plan to cart it with you in the carriage. If you wish to play for a particular gentleman, invite him to your home, sit by the French doors, and play. He will love it! Once you are married, of course, you may be tempted to ignore your music entirely, but continued practice will provide you with a worthwhile distraction from the day-to-day.

• 
Drawing
. Pencil sketches, filled in with watercolors, are a ladylike accomplishment and produce lovely items to hang in one’s drawing room or sitting room. If one has a taste for the picturesque, one’s productions can be truly artistic!

• 
Reading
. Make up a list of serious books, such as James Fordyce’s
Sermons to Young Women
or Vicesimus Knox’s
Elegant Extracts in Prose
, and work your way through it. If you must read novels, be sure they are the improving sort, with proper heroines who listen to their parents and rarely make bad decisions, such as
Pamela
by Samuel Richardson or
Evelina
by Fanny Burney. Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novels, such as
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and
The Romance of the Forest
, have heroines of superior habits and understanding and are less objectionable than other novels of that sort.

• 
Fancy needlework
. If you can put off most of the plain sewing on your servants and your daughters, you will have time for fancy work, such as:

• 
Embroidery
. Trace a pattern lightly onto your fabric with a pencil and stitch over it, then wash out the pencil marks. White embroidery on white muslin is beautiful; embroider a gown or a shawl with running stitch
(
Fig. A
)
and satin stitch
(
Fig. B
)
and wait for the compliments to roll in!