The Georgian House in Charlotte Square

The Georgian House at #7 Charlotte Square in New Town, Edinburgh, Scotland is a fine example of Georgian architecture. The square was designed by Robert Adam in 1792, but he did not live to see it built. The house itself was designed by Edward Butterworth and built in 1796, strictly following Adam's plan.

The Georgian House Teach Pack, a 42 page PDF document, is designed to teach children (and others who are interested) about the intimate details of a Georgian house and its occupants. While Jane Austen did not travel to Scotland, this house provides an insight into the every day life of a middle-class family during her era. The teach pack itself is full of interesting details and activities, especially about life below stairs.

The house has been restored and furnished in the manner of the late 18th and early 18th century by the National Trust of Scotland, and is open to the public.

Little Girl's Dress, 1810-1815

This girl's dress looks like a miniature version of an adult's gown. The dress was probably made from another dress, perhaps from the girl's mother. Nevertheless, it is in remarkable condition considering that it had been worn by a five year old.

Click here to read more about this dress on the Corsets and Crinolines website.


Learn more about children's clothes here:

Jessamyn's Regency Costume Companion

Children's Costume History

Regency Children's Clothing: Day Wear and Play Wear

Changing Children's Fashion

Letter Writing in Jane Austen's Time

During Jane Austen’s time, letters were written on sheet of paper that were folded and sealed, as in this sample. The recipient of the letter had to pay for the delivery. Therefore, the fewer pages that were used, the less expensive the cost, since the fee was based on the size of a letter and the distance it traveled.

Envelopes were not used. They would have added an additional sheet of paper and cost more for the recipient. To keep the letter affordable, people also wrote in a cross letter style as shown below.
Hand made papers were made in molds, hence one could readily observe the paper marks and ribbing from the parallel wires in the mold. Often these “laid” papers also bore distinctive watermarks. Double click on the image below to view these distinctive markings up close.

Writing implements included the quill pen, an inkstand filled with ink, pen knife, and sometimes a writing box.

Roller blotters made their appearance during the 19th century. Before this time, writers dried wet ink by sprinkling grains of sand over the words.


Creating quill pens was an art, since the nib had to be carefully cut with a knife so that the hollow core would hold just the right amount of ink and release it steadily under pressure. If the writer wrote for any length of time, fingers on the writing hand would often become ink stained. Quill pens, most commonly obtained from the wing feathers of a goose, had to be sharpened often with a pen knife. The average quill pen lasted for only a week before it was discarded.

After folding the paper, a sender would seal the letter with a custom wax seal stamp, that in some instances bore the family crest or the sender’s initials. The address on the outside remained simple, directing the bearer of the letter to the city or town, street, and the name of the receiver.
This is a photo of Jane Austen's writing table and chair at Chawton, where she wrote the bulk of her novels and, I imagine, her letters as well.

Find out more about letter writing here:

The Writing Implement of Jane Austen: The Quill Pen

London Mail and Postal Service: The Georgian Index

18th and 19th Century Wooden Seal Boxes

Cutting a Quill Pen

Jane Austen Tours

Storyline Journeys is a travel service in England that attempts to bring great authors to life.

If you click on the bolded words, you will see an interesting itinerary from London for the Jane Austen tour. Included are photographs of Chawton, the dining parlor where Jane Austen wrote her letters, and her Clementi square piano.

Pride and Prejudice Quiz

How much do you know about Pride and Prejudice movies? This quiz by ExpertRating Quiz might surprise you. Warning: the quiz was designed for movie buffs.

Click here to begin.

Finding Information About the Regency and Georgian Eras

In researching information for this blog, I am discovering that public libraries and museums are becoming increasingly creative in featuring their collections online. Because Jane Austen lived during the Regency and Georgian eras, my searches use both tag lines.The New York Public library's website describes the Regency Style and features related books on its shelves. Click here to read some short, insightful descriptions, such as this quote:

This period saw a continuous search for novelties in design. Chinoiserie and the “Hindu,” or Indian, styles became fashionable, along with nationalistically inspired Gothic or Tudor decorative elements. The Greek chair with sabre legs, elegant sideboards, revolving bookcases, and couches with claw feet were popular.

The Victorian and Albert Museum website goes through great lengths to describe period styles, including Palladianism, Neoclassicism, Chinoiserie, and more. In addition to learning something about the era, the V&A also showcases some of its objects to illustrate their point.
Museum and libraries aren't the only organizations interested in imparting good information on their sites. This fireplace company, West Country Fires Limited, located in Hampstead U.K., sells Georgian style fireplaces. The company's website contains this description:

Georgian interiors were as important as exteriors, with a new-found emphasis on home entertaining, and were intended to illustrate a cultural wealth alongside the material wealth. The fireplace was inevitably the focus of the room, and fireplace designs from this period incorporate many Classical elements. In the evolution of fireplace design the fire surround itself was an invention of Renaissance Italy and was in the first instance designed along Classical lines, namely a pair of jambs either side of the hearth with an entablature linking the two.

The site offers a veritable wealth of information about fireplace surrounds! What a great place to get started on the subject. In writing this blog, I find it is simply amazing how many diverse ways there are to uncover information about Jane Austen's world on the World Wide Web. These resources are in addition to the traditional scholarly articles, books, and journals. I'm sure I won't have enough time in the day to discover them all.

Balls and Dances in Jane Austen's Day

Many country towns had a monthly ball throughout the winter, in some of which the same apartment served for dancing and tea-room. Dinner parties more frequently ended with an extempore dance on the carpet, to the music of a harpsichord in the house, or a fiddle from the village. This was always supposed to be for the entertainment of the young people, but many, who had little pretension to youth, were very ready to join in it. There can be no doubt that Jane herself enjoyed dancing, for she attributes this taste to her favourite heroines; in most of her works, a ball or a private dance is mentioned, and made of importance.

Many things connected with the ball-rooms of those days have now passed into oblivion. The barbarous law which confined the lady to one partner throughout the evening must indeed have been abolished before Jane went to balls. It must be observed, however, that this custom was in one respect advantageous to the gentleman, inasmuch as it rendered his duties more practicable. He was bound to call upon his partner the next morning, and it must have been convenient to have only one lady for whom he was obliged

To gallop all the country over,
The last night’s partner to behold,
And humbly hope she caught no cold.

From the Memoirs of Jane Austen by J. Edward Austen-Leigh, p 34

This is Mrs. Bennett's account to Mr. Bennett of the local Assembly Room ball when Jane met Mr. Bingley:

"Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. Everybody said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice. Only think of that, my dear, he actually danced with her twice; and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her, however, he did not admire her at all; indeed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going down the dance. So he inquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger--'"

In a personal account, Jane writes of a ball she attended in 1799,

"We were very well entertained, and could have stayed longer, but for the arrival of my list shoes to convey me home, and I did not like to keep them waiting in the cold. The room was tolerable full, and the ball opened by Miss Glyn. The Miss Lances had partners, Captain Dauvergne's friend appeared in regimentals, Caroline Maitland had an officer to flirt with, and Mr. John Harrison was deputed by Captain Smith, himself being absent, to ask me to dance. Everything went well, you see, especially after we had tucked Mrs. Lance's neckerchief in behind, and fastened it with a pin."

Chandelier, Assembly Room, Bath

Click here to read more about dancing on this blog

Also click on this link to learn about the dances in Becoming Jane. The post is quite thorough and detailed.

First Impressions

First Impressions is a fan listing created for fans of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett. Click here to view the site and join as a fan, or to download a code and link the site to your own website.

The first two rules on the site are explicit:

1. you must be a fan of the relationship between Lizzy and Darcy

2. this is not a fan listing for Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle, Keira Knightley or Matthew Macfadyen

New Features on Jane Austen's World

Gentle readers,

My favorite part of the day is when I spend an hour or two reading Jane Austen's words or researching information about her. New features on this blog, which I find exciting, are the audio podcasts and short videos I have found about her world and era.

These links sit on the sidebar under Audio and Visual Media. I am NOT including YouTube videos, since they are easy to find.

Make yourself a pot of tea, then click on one of the links, such as the Biography video, or Tea With Jane Austen, and spend a delightful time listening to learned individuals discuss your favorite author and her era. Click here to listen to a podcast from Australia about the truth about Mr. Darcy, or go the the ABC website in Sydney, Australia.

Ms. Place

Comment: Austen.blog rightly points out that Professor Penny Gay has confused her actors. She mistakenly thinks Matthew McConaughey was Mr. Darcy in PP-05. Ah, what a perfect Jane Austen moment of folly! Despite her mistake, Penny's observations about Mr. Darcy seem well informed.

High perch phaetons and carriage dresses

During the Regency Era, a lady would never go out in a carriage and be seen in public without wearing the proper dress.

This is a carriage costume from November, 1819, as illustrated in La Belle Assemblee (Image from the University of Washington digital library.) The pink pelisse was made of figured gros-de-Naples and trimmed with the fur of an American grey squirrel. Click here to view more carriage dresses.

Two ladies in a high perch phaeton. The owners of these sporty, open-air and lightning fast carriages actually drove the vehicle, as there was no place for a coachman. Phaeton seats were built high off the ground, the sides of the vehicle were open to the elements (a top could be pulled over as a screen from sun or rain), and the back wheels were larger than the front wheels.

However, these light, airy, well-sprung vehicles were prone to tipping over when turning around corners too fast, thus a driver had to be skilled in order to move at high speed. The phaeton, therefore, was extremely popular with the rakish set.


Read more about transportation during the Regency Era at:

Carriages Carriages and their parts Transports of Delight: How Jane Austen's Characters Got Around, Ed Ratcliffe, JASNA

Click here to read another post about transportation on this site.

Steventon Rectory: Jane Austen's Childhood home

Below sits a photograph of all that remains of Steventon Rectory, which was razed in 1820 shortly after Jane's death: A field with trees and a metal pump in an enclosure (you can view it at left of the photo). This pump replaced the wood pump from Jane's time (see drawing).




The back of the Steventon Rectory, drawn by Jane's niece, Anna Lefroy, gives few clues about the size of the house or what the front looked like. There seems to be a confusion as to how large the house actually was. (Why Was Jane Austen Sent away to School at Seven? An Empirical Look at a Vexing Question. by Linda Robinson Walker)

The lane that connected the rectory to Steventon Church resembled the rutted road in this photograph. These roads would get quite muddy during rainy weather.

Ladies often wore pattens over their delicate slippers to lift their feet off the mud. Metal pattens, like the one in this illustration, made a clicking noise on pavement. They would most likely sink in mud; and I imagine Jane and her sister, Cassandra, wore a device that more closely resembled a wooden clog to prevent the patten from sinking.
Regardless of how many precautions a lady took, a long walk through wet fields and muddy lanes resulted in dirty hems and shoes, as depicted by Keira Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett in 2005's Pride and Prejudice.

In Chapter II of Memoirs of Jane Austen, J. Edward Austen-Leigh wrote about the demise of the patten, which had become a distant memory in 1871:

The other peculiarity was that, when the roads were
dirty, the sisters took long walks in pattens. This defence against wet
and dirt is now seldom seen. The few that remain are banished from good
society, and employed only in menial work; but a hundred and fifty years
ago they were celebrated in poetry, and considered so clever a
contrivance that Gay, in his 'Trivia,' ascribes the invention to a god
stimulated by his passion for a mortal damsel, and derives the name
'Patten' from 'Patty.'

The patten now supports each frugal dame,
Which from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.

But mortal damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement. First
it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down
into the pliant galoshe--lighter to wear and more effectual to protect--a
no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates
when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa'
back to the original three-legged stool.

As an illustration of the purposes which a patten was intended to serve,
I add the following epigram, written by Jane Austen's uncle, Mr. Leigh
Perrot, on reading in a newspaper the marriage of Captain Foote to Miss
Patten:--

Through the rough paths of life, with a patten your guard,
May you safely and pleasantly jog;
May the knot never slip, nor the ring press too hard,
Nor the _Foot_ find the _Patten_ a clog.

Read more about Steventon here:

You can view more photographs of Steventon and the surrounding area here.

To read the excellent and detailed article about Steventon Rectory by Linda Robinson Walker, click here.

View an image of a wood patten in an article about Regency Footwear here.

James Gillray, Political Satirist

One of the top, most ruthless caricaturists in Jane Austen's day was James Gillray, whose biting political cartoons still define the Georgian and Regency periods. Unusual for an artist of his stature, he engraved the cartoons himself, such as the one above entitled, "Following the Fashion," 1794. Although his observations were often times unflattering, this caricaturist was much admired, and his illustrations sold well in a shop on St. James Street, even attracting The Prince Regent's patronage. Toward the end of his life, Gillray began to lose his sight. He died in 1815, an alcoholic and insane.

Click here to hear an extremely informative 27-minute discussion on BBC radio about the cartoonist. From this discussion you get a good sense of the era, and the printing and publishing business.

Review of The Jane Austen Handbook

Book Review: The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World, by Margaret C. Sullivan (Editrix of Austen Blog)

This book is both informative and a hoot. Two of us Janeites on the James looked through it today at lunch with delight, knowing we had found a fun, informative, and handy Jane guide. I loved the appendix most, and the glossary alone is worth my money. Ms. Leellie, a tad younger than moi, just couldn’t get enough of marriage proposals, engagements, and the like.

If you would like a quick reference about attire, carriages, getting around, playing card games, servants by duty and rank, treating the sick, giving dinner parties, and attending balls, then this guide presents information about them all in an easy and accessible format.

I think this book would be a particularly useful introduction for young Janeites who have just discovered their passion for Jane Austen. As for those of us who are slightly longer in the tooth and who have loved Jane for almost as long as she's been buried, this is a must-have, quick pocket reference.

My Rating: Three Regency Fans
Run, don’t walk to the bookstore and purchase this guide.

Click here for order information.

Panoramic/Virtual Views of Bath

Click here for some fabulous panoramic views of Bath as photographed by John Law.

When the site loads (be patient), double click on the image and wait for it to load. Move your cursor left or right. You can then see a 360 degree view of Bath Abbey, or gardens by Capability Brown in Bath Spa University, or the Royal Crescent, Bath.

It's almost the next best thing to being there.

Who is your favorite older female character in a Jane Austen novel?

Next month the Janeites on the James, a small group a friend and I formed, will meet again to discuss Jane Austen's novels. In our short association we have run out of new novels to discuss. We are purists, and while we appreciate the Jane Austen spin-offs, they do not figure in our discussions. For this reason, we have had to be creative in choosing our topics.

We are to come prepared to discuss our favorite older female supporting character. Mrs. Bennett immediately springs to mind, of course. And who can forget Lady Catherine de Bourgh? However, I am presently settling on the meddling and mean-spirited Aunt Norris from Mansfield Park (first photo). Miss Taylor, Emma's former governess, is too wishy washy for my tastes, although the generous (albeit vulgar) Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility (above) intrigues me, as does the ever proper but milquetoast Mrs. Dashwood (below).

As I search for a character to discuss with my group, I wonder: Do you know who your favorite older female character in a Jane Austen novel is, and why? I would love to bring your comments to the group.

The incomparable Judy Dench as haughty Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Beau Brummell's Gambling

Beau Brummel’s gambling addiction spelled his eventual downfall in Society. His passion for betting on everything under the sun was shared by his set, who in some instances gambled and lost fortunes overnight. One can still trace these bets, many of them personal, in the betting book at White’s, a gentleman’s club in London. In this book a gentleman recorded his private wagers, no doubt to aid his memory in case alcohol had befuddled his brain. Bets ranged from speculating on the date of a birth or death, the sex of an expected child, who would marry whom, appointments to a position, scandals, who murdered whom, and more. Here then, are a few of Mr. Brummel’s wagers:

Mr Brummel bets Mr. Irby one hundred guineas to ten that Buonaparte returns to Paris (Decr. 12th, 1812)

Mr. Brummel bets Mr. Methuen 200 gs to 20 gs that Buonaparte returns alive to Paris, (Decr. 12th, 1812)

A Capain Capel placed the following wager with Beau:

Capt. Capel bets Mr. Brummell 5 gs that Napoleon is not at the head of the French government in Paris within ten days from this day. March 15th, 1815

Even as Beau’s fortunes took a drastic turn for the worse, he managed to hide his indebtedness for a number of years. But he could not keep debt at bay forever, particularly not after his relationship with the Prince Regent soured. Eventually he was unable to pay off even the gentleman’s debts he had made. Beau’s final bet at White’s in March, 1815, “that the Bourbons are on the throne of France on May 1st next,” was marked “not paid, 20th January, 1816. (Donald A. Lowe, The Regency Underworld, p. 137.)

In 1816, Beau fled to Calais to escape his debtors. Donald A. Lowe writes,

As was customary in the period, an auction was held of the property of a ‘certain gentleman of fashion lately gone to the Continent’. Some came to watch, with no intention of buying, as is the way in every age. This marked the point of no return for Brummell, although he continued for many years to nurse false hopes of being restored to his old haunts and his former glory. In 1819 his star had sunk so low that a scion of the minor nobility at White’s – the very type of Englishman who had once treated him with such respect – wrote in the betting book,

Ld Yarmouth gives Lord Glengall five guineas to receive one hundred guineas if Mr. G. Brummell returns to London before Buonaparte returns to Paris.


To read more about Mr. Brummell on this blog, click here.

To read more about gaming houses and gentleman's clubs, click here.