This Jane Austen blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details related to this topic.
As promised, I’m back with a reminder and announcement about Regency Marketplace’s brand-new seasonal Jane Austen Box! I’m delighted to share that the theme of this new box is “Christmas In Highbury”! If you missed my review of the lovely Autumn in Chawton Box I received, you can read about it and see photos HERE.
Christmas in Highbury
This Christmas, be transported to the little hamlet of Highbury in County Surrey. Here we find Emma and her friends and family preparing for a delightful country holiday, and you’re invited! Regency Christmastide for the aristocracy was often celebrated at the families’ country estates, and in Emma, we see her sister Isabella and Knightley’s brother John bring all their children to Hartfield for the occasion, enlivening the quiet household with their fun and noise. Mr. Woodhouse would have them stay forever!
The Perfect Gift
The “Christmas In Highbury” Jane Austen Box will be filled to the brim with a cozy and elegant medley of Emma and Regency-inspired Christmas gifts! A perfect gift box to send or receive this holiday season, it also makes a wonderful hostess gift. December 16th is Jane Austen’s birthday, too, so celebrate in style!
At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather.
Jane Austen’s Emma
Place Your Order
The “Christmas In Highbury” Jane Austen Box will be available to reserve from Saturday, October 15th-Tuesday, November 15th, 2022. All boxes will ship out the first week of December! These boxes sell out quickly, so do not delay. Place an order for yourself or as a gift for a friend or relative today.
If you want to take it up a notch, you can subscribe to the Quarterly Jane Austen Box and receive a box every 3 months, or purchase as a One-Time Gift option (non-recurring). Free Shipping in the USA! International Flat Rate Shipping available.
Coupon Code
Many thanks to Regency Marketplace for providing me with a discount code that I can share with all my friends and readers this Christmas ordering season. If you would like to receive a discount, you can use my special COUPON CODE for 10% off the Winter Box! *While Supplies Last.*
I just received my first Jane Austen Box from Regency Marketplace, and the minute I opened it, I knew I had to share it with all of my friends here at Jane Austen’s World. This is a beautiful Jane Austen-themed experience not to be missed–and it comes right to your own front door!
Special thanks to @regency_marketplace for sending me the “Autumn At Chawton Cottage” box this month so I could fully experience it for myself! This delightful box is filled to the brim with cozy Autumn and Jane Austen-themed items! I can’t wait to put on my cute new socks and have a cup of tea!
Box Full of Surprises
Each Jane Austen Box features a range of products from items of historical interest to lovely items you can incorporate in your everyday life, edibles and fine teas to Jane Austen inspired products. All boxes also include some form of book — expand your library!!
Categories include, but are not limited to:
Fine Teas
Books
Candles
Edibles
Wearables
Items of Historical Interest
Jane Austen Inspired Products
Bath and Body
Home Decor
Writing Accessories
Booklovers Paraphernalia
And More!
Subscription boxes are delightful because there are so many surprises held within each box. Regency Marketplace does a lovely job of keeping the mystery alive. They give hints and a theme for each box, but they never show what specific items are coming in each new box. That makes it even more exciting to open when it comes in the mail!
Unboxing
One of the most exciting parts about getting any kind of subscription box is the actual unboxing. When it arrived, I was so impressed with the packaging and the beautiful box. When I opened it and saw the pretty tissue and the sticker, I almost couldn’t bring myself to open it. I snapped a picture because it felt like my birthday and Christmas had arrived all at once.
If you’d like to watch an unboxing video of me opening the box, you can view it HERE. I had a blast (and it was my first time making a video reel like it). Here’s a peek inside:
Stay Tuned
The Winter Jane Austen Box will be available for Pre-Order October 15th – November 15th, and boxes will ship in early December. Regency Marketplace offers free shipping in the US. (International flat rate shipping is also available.) These luxurious boxes sell out quickly, so mark your calendars to reserve one for yourself or for a friend.
Enjoy this box for yourself, or gift one to a friend or family member for the holidays this year! Once the Winter Theme is announced, I will post a reminder to place your orders and a coupon code.
Sample of a previous Jane Austen Box
About Regency Marketplace
Regency Marketplace is run by the lovely Christina Denton. It was envisioned many years ago as a beautiful oasis for all things Regency and Jane Austen: a place where one could escape from the breakneck pace of today’s world, and enter into an era of elegance, charm, and wit.
A lifelong love of Jane Austen and the Regency Era is the guiding influence behind Regency Marketplace. As a family-run company, they work hard to source the best products for their discerning customers and fellow Janeites! They focus on celebrating the grace and beauty of an Era so distinct that it still captivates us two hundred years later.
Is this something you would like to receive as a gift? Would you buy it for yourself or for someone else as a lovely surprise?
Having just made a big move myself, I was intrigued by the thought that Jane Austen herself—not to mention several of her characters—knew what it took to move an entire household from one place to another.
One of the best resources available to us regarding a big move is the letter Austen wrote to Cassandra on January 3, 1801, prior to their family’s move to Bath from Steventon. From it, and from the details in her novels, we learn many interesting details about what a big move entailed.
If you’ve ever wanted some Regency advice on moving house, this is for you!
Steventon Rectory, Wikimedia Commons
Send Your Servants Ahead
In terms of logistics, members of the genteel class usually sent servants ahead of them when they went from one house to another, as we see when Mr. Bingley goes to Netherfield:
Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.
Pride and Prejudice
Similarly, Elinor and Marianne, when arriving in London with Mrs. Jennings after three days of travel, are greeted by “all the luxury of a good fire.” The house is “handsome, and handsomely fitted up.” Elinor writes to her mother before a dinner that will not “be ready in less than two hours from their arrival.” It’s clear that Mrs. Jennings employs servants who clean, cook, shop, and prepare the house for her visits.
Hire Good People
When preparing to move to Bath, Jane Austen’s mother wanted to keep two maids: “My mother looks forward with as much certainty as you can do to our keeping two maids; my father is the only one not in the secret.”
With her typical flair for humor, Austen hoped to engage other servants as well: “We plan having a steady cook and a young, giddy housemaid, with a sedate, middle-aged man, who is to undertake the double office of husband to the former and sweetheart to the latter. No children, of course, to be allowed on either side.”
Do Your Research
In Austen’s letter, she talks about several areas of Bath where they hoped to find a house: Westgate Buildings, Charles Street, and “some of the short streets leading from Laura Place or Pulteney Street.”
About Westgate Buildings, Austen wrote: “though quite in the lower part of the town, are not badly situated themselves. The street is broad, and has rather a good appearance.” Regarding Charles Street, she thought it “preferable”: “The buildings are new, and its nearness to Kingsmead Fields would be a pleasant circumstance.” And concerning the third area: “The houses in the streets near Laura Place I should expect to be above our price. Gay Street would be too high, except only the lower house on the left-hand side as you ascend.”
4 Syndey Place, Bath
Mrs. Austen seemed to have a preference: “her wishes are at present fixed on the corner house in Chapel Row, which opens into Prince’s Street. Her knowledge of it, however, is confined only to the outside, and therefore she is equally uncertain of its being really desirable as of its being to be had.”
None of the Austens were in favor of Oxford Buildings: “we all unite in particular dislike of that part of the town, and therefore hope to escape.”
Bring Your Art
We know from Austen’s letter that they planned to take the following pictures and paintings from Steventon to Bath: “[T]he battle-piece, Mr. Nibbs, Sir William East, and all the old heterogeneous miscellany, manuscript, Scriptural pieces dispersed over the house, are to be given to James.”
Good artwork is hard to find.
Of special note, Jane tells Cassandra, “Your own drawings will not cease to be your own, and the two paintings on tin will be at your disposal.”
Good Furniture is Worth Moving
Apparently, Rev. and Mrs. Austen had a very good bed that was irreplaceable: “My father and mother, wisely aware of the difficulty of finding in all Bath such a bed as their own, have resolved on taking it with them…” Austen wrote this about the rest of the household beds: “all the beds, indeed, that we shall want are to be removed — viz., besides theirs, our own two, the best for a spare one, and two for servants; and these necessary articles will probably be the only material ones that it would answer to send down.”
When it came to their dressers, they decided it was time for an upgrade: “I do not think it will be worth while to remove any of our chests of drawers; we shall be able to get some of a much more commodious sort, made of deal, and painted to look very neat…”
Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton.
As to the rest of their furniture, they decided it would be better to replace most of it in Bath: “We have thought at times of removing the sideboard, or a Pembroke table, or some other piece of furniture, but, upon the whole, it has ended in thinking that the trouble and risk of the removal would be more than the advantage of having them at a place where everything may be purchased. Pray send your opinion.”
Jane’s final comments to Cassandra are amusing as ever: “My mother bargains for having no trouble at all in furnishing our house in Bath, and I have engaged for your willingly undertaking to do it all.”
Visit People on the Way
In Austen’s letter, she explains their family travel plans: “[M]y mother and our two selves are to travel down together, and my father follow us afterwards in about a fortnight or three weeks. We have promised to spend a couple of days at Ibthorp in our way. We must all meet at Bath, you know, before we set out for the sea, and, everything considered, I think the first plan as good as any.”
Ibthorpe, Photo by Rachel Dodge
Not So Different
Moving house in Jane Austen’s day was not quite so different from today. Though the modes of transportation and the methods of research and communication were somewhat different, I was delighted to find that the Austens’ moving plans were surprisingly applicable to mine! (Except for the servants.)
Inquiring readers, I despise housework. As I lugged my vacuum cleaner from room to room I thought: ‘It could be worse. I would only have a broom or mop had I lived in 1810.’
And so I should be grateful to clean my house in the 21st century. But what were the duties a typical maid of all work or housemaid during this era, and what cleaning supplies did they use?
The Housemaid c.1782-6 Thomas Gainsborough, Tate Gallery, Public Domain
Dusting & Sweeping:
A Georgian/Regency household experienced a daily fight with dust, one that was usually lost. A wealthy family could afford more than one housemaid, but ordinary housewives most likely only had a maid of all work to help her. The poor were left to their own devices. Most roads and lanes in cities and towns were made of dirt that turned into mud on rainy days. Animal droppings from horses and cattle driven through town by drovers dried into dust if not swept from the street. Brisk winds would sweep dirt and flakes and dried droppings through cracks and crevices around windows and under doors. On mild days, windows were cracked open to admit fresh air, allowing the detritus to drift in a constant invasion.
Front entrances (indoors and outdoors), floors, and rugs also required constant maintenance. The job to clean them was unceasing.
In 1776, Susannah Whatman wrote the following in The Housekeeping Book for her housemaids:
“In cleaning floors…use as little soap as possible (if any) in ‘scouring’ rooms. Fuller’s earth and fine sand preserves the colour of the boards, and does not leave a white appearance as soap does.[Note that this job was performed on hands and knees.] All the rooms to be dry scrubbed with white sand.”
Susannah also wanted her maids to use a painters brush on ledges, furniture, and window frames – then follow up with feather dusters. Under no circumstances were they to dust pictures “nor the frames of anything that had a gilt edge.” They were never to dust black busts.
[Other mistresses expected housemaids to dust daily with clean linen cloths. After cleaning spots on wood furniture, they rubbed the wood with linseed oil until shiny.]
Daily chores:
Rise early to prepare the ground floor for the family. (more about this below)
Sweep the hall and staircase, and the “banister occasionally rubbed with very little oil and every day with a dry cloth.”
“To keep a small mop in the cupboard of the WC (water closet), and use water everyday to keep the inside clean.” The maid also had instructions to use only warm water during frosty weather.
Sweep the steps in front of the house
Force back all the window shutters so they will not get warped. Regarding shutters and drapes, they must be regulated according to the movement of the sun to prevent the sun from shining in full on carpets, painted furniture, pictures, and furniture with mahogany wood. For north facing windows, “the rooms must be aired, and the flies and flygokdubgs destroyed in time.”
Work in the Storeroom after her housework is finished, except on Saturday
Weekly housekeeping duties:
Tuesdays wash her own things and the dusters in the morning, and help wash stockings. In the evening iron her own things.
A Woman Doing Laundry, Henry Robert Morland, 18th C., Denver Art Museum, public domain
Wednesdays fold with the Laundrymaid
Saturdays whisk the window curtains, and shake mats and carpets.
Her list goes on and on, which makes one wonder when and if the housemaid in Mrs Whatman’s house had any spare time
Daniel Pool in What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew states that housemaids were the women who kept the house running. I’d like to add that the housekeeper (or mistress of the house) made sure the people she supervised stuck to their daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedules in the performance of their duties.
Her First Place, George Dunlop Leslie, 19th c.?, Wikimedia, public domain work.
The reasons for the housemaids’ early rising was to make sure to lay & light the fires so that the family arose to a warm room. They then emptied grates of ash and cleaned them. For morning ablutions they hauled clean and heavy buckets of warm water up to the family’s rooms, sometimes as much as four times per day. After the family had bathed and washed and started their day, the maids took away dirty water and emptied chamber pots. They opened or closed curtains, then made beds in the morning and turned them down at night.
Two Maid-Servants at a Brook, 1779, Pehr Hilleström, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In the evening housemaids ironed or mended clothes, or tended to their own needs. Their day was never ending.
As the 19th century progressed, however, housework became less onerous. This was due to new inventions. Rumford fireplaces were more efficient and smaller than traditional fireplaces, and emitted more heat due to their design. Indoor plumbing was slowly introduced and by the end of the 19th century had become common even in middle class houses. Kitchen stoves with flat tops and doors that opened to an oven were invented and were sold by 1790. Their design encouraged the production of new flat-bottomed pots and pans. Insulated ice boxes kept an ice block from melting, keeping foods like milk and meats fresh. By 1809, methods of preserving food through sterilized glass containers or hermetically sealed cans reduced daily food preparation.
These inventions eased the intensive labor of maintaining and keeping a clean and smooth working household, allowing for fewer servants to perform the same chores or dividing the tasks in a different, more efficient way. Still, I thank my lucky stars for today’s automatic can openers, reusable storage containers, electric vacuum cleaners, freezers, water heaters, and sanitizers.
Regardless of our modern improvements, I still hate to do housework.
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From fox hunting to whist — the facts of daily life in 19th-century England (1993). NY, Touchstone, published by Simon & Schuster.
Whatman, Susanna. The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman. (Foreword by Christina Hardyment, afterword by Thomas Balston.) First published in 1776, published 1987. London, National Trust Classics.
I love the idea of a Regency-style Christmas season, complete with gifts, foods, and traditions that Jane Austen and her heroines might have enjoyed. Though Christmas traditions were different during Jane Austen’s time than they are today, as I share in my article about Regency Christmas Traditions, it’s fun to think of creative ideas that can make for a truly Austen-tatious holiday season.
In Persuasion, Austen paints a Christmas scene. It’s one of my favorite festive scenes, and I love to think of ways to recreate it:
On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others. […] Charles and Mary also came in, of course, during their visit, and Mr Musgrove made a point of paying his respects to Lady Russell, and sat down close to her for ten minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamour of the children on his knees, generally in vain. It was a fine family-piece.
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Evergreen Decor:
Create your own holiday decorations the way people did during Jane Austen’s time. Trim your windows and home with holly branches and evergreen trimmings.
On Christmas Eve the children laid out the traditional holly branches on the window ledges…
Finally, charitable gift giving was a large part of the Regency Christmas season. On the day after Christmas, on St. Stephen’s Day (now called Boxing Day), people gave gifts to charities and to those in need.
The gentry gave gifts to the servants who worked in their homes and those hired to help on their land. Read The History of Boxing Day And How To Celebrate It (Lindsay Schlegel – Verity.com) for some modern-day ideas for ways to celebrate Boxing Day.
Now it’s your turn! What do you like to do around the holidays to make your gifts and get-togethers special? Do you have any Jane Austen traditions this time of year? I enjoy attending one of the local Jane Austen Birthday Teas in my area at this time of year. At home, I love to decorate the house with greenery and bake family recipes! -Rachel
Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England is now available! By JAW contributor Brenda S. Cox. See Review. Available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.
“My idea of good company…is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” – Jane Austen, Persuasion
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Project Gutenberg: eBook of Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2), by Charles G. Harper
STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE: A PICTURESQUE HISTORY
OF THE COACHING AGE, VOL. II, By CHARLES G. HARPER. 1903. Click on this link.
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