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The Truth Revealed: What Do Regency Ladies Really Wear Under Those Thin Yet Elegant Empire Dresses?

Posted in Jane Austen's World, tagged , on July 26, 2007| 2 Comments »

I found many fascinating facts in the Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World. One that most particularly piqued my interest was that ladies generally did not wear drawers in Jane Austen’s day. I wondered about that statement. Then I viewed the following hand colored etching attributed to Thomas Rowlandson.

This caricature depicts the staircase leading to the Great Room at Somerset House in Pall Mall, which was where the members of the Royal Academy exhibited their paintings. The stairway to the Great Room was steep and long, and undoubtedly tough to negotiate during crowded days.

Rowlandson’s caricature speaks to the popular perception that there were two kinds of viewers who came to Somerset House: Those who wanted to see the paintings and sculptures, and those who came to ogle the ladies whose legs and ankles were exposed walking up those prominent stairs.

In Rowlandson’s cartoon, the ladies tumble down in a domino effect, revealing much, much more than a neat turn of ankle. I adore the details in this scene: The rakes ready to take their visual fill of the unfortunate situation, while elegant ladies tumble haplessly, limbs akimbo and tender parts exposed. Interestingly, the ladies are wearing stockings but not much more beneath those gauzy muslins. Rowlandson proves Margaret C. Sullivan right and I am happy for it.

(Thomas Rowlandson, The Exhibition Stare Case (c. 1811, hand-colored etching; etching may be by Rowlandson, although the coloring is not).

The Romantic Cosmopolitanism: The 12th Annual NASSR Conference: “Eyes on the Metropole: Seeing London and Beyond”, By Sharon M. Twigg and Theresa M. Kelley

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Shopping in London during Jane Austen’s Time

Posted in Shopping, tagged on July 1, 2007| 1 Comment »


Linen drapers, such as Harding and Howell in Pall Mall, were extremely important in an era when clothes were sewn by hand. In 1811, Jane Austen described a shopping expedition she made to a London establishment that sold handkerchiefs, gauzes, nets, veils, trims, and cloth:

We set off immediately after breakfast and must have reached Grafton House by 1/2 past 11 -, but when we entered the Shop, the whole counter was thronged & we waited a full half an hour before we c’d be attended to. When we were served however, I was very well satisfied with my purchases.

A century before Jane’s shopping expedition, London shopkeepers began to spruce up their shop fronts and displays to attract customers. Large bow-windows, such as the silk merchant’s in the image above from Spitalfield, allowed for the entry of light as well as an attractive space for the display of goods. By the end of the 18th century, it was estimated that around 200 different types of shops could be found in London. Shops tended to be open for long hours, from around seven AM until seven or eight PM. These hours were perhaps one of the reasons why shopkeepers and their assistants tended to live on the premises, with a shop area in front and a parlor behind.

Shops also tended to be grouped. For instance, the ladies of the Ton frequented fashionable shops Oxford Street or Bond Street located in Mayfair, whereas the shops and clubs for gentlemen were clustered in St. James’s. The discerning shopper could also purchased goods at warehouses in Covent Garden, mercers and linen drapers in Cheapside, and new shops in the Strand. A number of shops from that era still thrive today. Berry Brothers Wine Shop in St. James’s was founded in 1698 and remains essentially unchanged since its founding, as the interior above attests. Locks, the hatters in St James’s, also founded in the seventeenth century, still makes hats and bowlers for the fashionable set. And Floris , a fragrance shop Beau Brummel frequented, can still be found on Jermyn Street.Shop keepers advertised through circulars, trade cards, newspaper notices, or board-men, who were employed to roam the streets. In the 1760’s, the large shop signs that had once hung over shops and identified the shop’s merchandise to a populace that largely could not read were deemed hazardous. They were removed by law, but a few managed to survive, as this account in the Book of Days describes:

In Holywell-street, Strand, is the last remaining shop sign in situ, being a boldly-sculptured half-moon, gilt, and exhibiting the old conventional face in the centre. Some twenty years ago it was a mercer’s shop, and the bills made out for customers were ‘adorned with a picture’ of this sign. It is now a bookseller’s, and the lower part of the windows have been altered into the older form of open shop. A court beside it leads into the great thoroughfare; and the corner-post is decorated with a boldly-carved lion’s head and paws, acting as a corbel to support a still older house beside it. This street altogether is a good, and now an almost unique specimen of those which once were the usual style of London business localities, crowded, tortuous, and ill-ventilated, having shops closely and inconveniently packed, but which custom had made familiar and inoffensive to all; while the old traders, who delighted in ‘old styles,’ looked on improvements with absolute horror, as ‘a new-fashioned way’ to bankruptcy.

Learn more about shopping during the Regency Era in the following links:

Texts:

Eighteenth Century London, Nichola Johnson, ISBN 0-11-290448-3

A Frivolous Distinction: Fashion and Needlework in the Works of Jane Austen, Penelope Byrde, Bath City Council, ISBN 0-901303-09-7

High Society, Venetia Murray, ISBN 0-670-85758-0

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Beau Brummell’s Gambling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 28, 2007| 1 Comment »


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.

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London Houses in Jane Austen’s Day – 2

Posted in Architecture, tagged on May 27, 2007| 1 Comment »

Louis Simonds continues to describe London townhouses in his book, An American in Regency England:
The plan of these houses is very simple, two rooms on each story; one in the front with two or three windows looking on the street, the other on a yard behind, often very small; the stairs generally taken out of the breadth of the backroom. The ground-floor is usually elevated a few feet above the level of the street, and separated from it by an area, a sort of ditch, a few feet wide, generally from three to eight, and six or eight feet deep, inclosed by an iron railing; the windows of the kitchen are in this area. A bridge of stone or brick leads to the door of the house.


The front of these houses is about twenty or twenty-five feet wide; they certainly have rather a paltry appearance – but you cannot pass the threshold without being struck with the look of order and neatness of the interior. Instead of the abominable filth of the common entrance and common stairs of of a French house, here you step from the very street on a neat floorcloth or carpet, the wall painted or papered, a lamp in its glass bell hanging from the ceiling, and every apartment in the same style – all is neat, compact, and independent, or, as it is best expressed here, snug and comfortable – a familiar expression, rather vulgar perhaps, from the thing itself being too common.

To read more about townhouses during this era, click on the following:

English Heritage Townhouses Selection Guide: Domestic Buildings

Here’s an interesting historical detail, as described in The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall:

…rooms had no fixed functions in European houses until the eighteenth century. Members of the family had no privacy as we know it today. There were no spaces that were sacred or specialized. Strangers came and went at will, while beds and tables were set up and taken down according to the moods and appetites of the occupants … In the eighteenth century, the house altered its form. In French, chambre was distinguished from salle. In English, the function of a room was indicated by its name – bedroom, living room, dining room. Rooms were arranged to open into a corridor or hall, like houses into a street. No longer did the occupants pass through one room into another. Relieved of the Grand Central Station atmosphere and protected by new spaces, the family pattern began to stabilize and was was expressed further in the form of the house. p.104

See the illustration of a Georgian terraced house below.

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London Houses in Jane Austen’s Day

Posted in Architecture, tagged on May 25, 2007|

Louis Simond was a French emigre who lived in America. He spent over 6 months in London in 1810, describing the customs and manners of the British in a book that is now entitled An American in Regency England.

During his tour of England, Louis met and talked to people from all walks of life. He observed every day and momentous events of that era, and visited the countryside, describing with a keen mind what he saw and ate and who he met.

Here is Louis’ description of a typical London Townhouse:

Each family occupy a whole house, unless very poor. There are advantages and disadvantages attending this custom. Among the first, the being more independent of the noise, the dirt, the contagious disorders, or the dangers of your neighbour’s fires, and having a more complete home. On the other hand, an apartment all on one floor, even of a few rooms only, looks much better, and is more convenient. These narrow houses, three or four stories high – one for eating, one for sleeping, a third for company, a fourth under ground for the kitchen, a fifth perhaps at top for the servants – and the agility, the ease, the quickness with which the individuals of the family run up and down, and perch on the different stories, give the idea of a cage with its sticks and birds.

Typical touches were bow fronts, Palladian windows, symmetry, graceful lines and neoclassical touches — the hallmarks of the Regency town house. This example of grand townhouses is of the Circus in Bath.

The Circus in Bath. Excellent example of Regency era town houses. Image: Wikipedia. Image taken by Anthony Parkes.

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