Streaming Jane Austen

Alicia Silverstone as Cher in Clueless, a modern adaptation of Emma. This film still leaves me laughing, and I suspect JA would have approved of its modern Beverley Hills setting.

Do you have an account with Netflix for instant videos? How about an Amazon prime account, which offers amazing discounts as well as free postage and handling for all your prime purchases? At less than $80 per year, Prime has proven to be my best investment in entertainment.

Here are a few Jane Austen film titles that have become available for instant streaming. These keep changing every six months or so, and I am always on the look out. In the instance of From Prada to Nada, which is a nada good send off of Sense and Sensibility, I cannot tell you how lucky I felt that I watched the film for free.

Netflix Streaming Video – instantly available with your instant video membership

• Pride and Prejudice 1980
• From Prada to Nada
• Aisha
• Clueless
• Emma 1996
• Mansfield Park 1983

The 1995 film adaptation of Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds is incomparable.

Amazon Prime, Instant videos free, for rent, or for purchase

• Persuasion 1995 (free with Prime)
• Pride and Prejudice 1940 (free with Prime)
• Pride and Prejudice 1980 (free with Prime)
• Emma 2009 (free with Prime)
• Other Jane Austen film adaptations are available for rent or purchase at Amazon.

I find the 1940 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice execrable. While many of the supporting actors are fabulous, even brilliant in parts, this story has been changed and Hollywoodized to the point where the lines are laughable (every “hottentot can dance”, instead of “every savage can dance”), and the ending is downright criminal. I have a running almost 2-year debate with a sometime visitor to this blog who is apoplectic at the idea that I don’t love or respect this film. She keeps coming back every once in a while to inform me that I don’t know sh*t from Shinola when it comes to the fine art of 1940s  film making, and that I wouldn’t be able to discern a donkey’s ass from that of a thoroughbred’s. (My terminology, not hers, but you get the idea.) Insult away, my dear! You cannot persuade me to like this film. Although I will respect anyone’s positive opinion about P&P 1940, it simply isn’t mine.

My rant about P&P 1940 brings to mind some of the worst moments in Jane Austen film adaptations. Here they are in no particular order:

The stellar Edna Mae Oliver as Lady CdeB, a softie romantic at heart

1.) Pride and Prejudice 1940: Laurence Olivier (not yet a Sir) as Darcy persuades the incomparable Edna Mae Oliver as Lady CdeB to become his accomplice in winning Elizabeth Bennet over. In other words, Lady CdeB turns out to be crotchety but NICE. The writers and producers of this film should have been made to apologize to every student who watched this film to write a book report and who received an F for getting the ending so dreadfully wrong. They subverted the students’ rights to NOT read the book and opt for a C or a D by watching the movie instead. In addition, 35-year-old Greer Garson was closer to Mrs. Bennet’s age of 41 or so than Elizabeth’s age of 19. And throughout the film good old Larry O resembled a wood mannequin in posture and facial expressions. In my humble opinion, our pinch-faced Larry and his near geriatric Greer had almost no chemistry between them. Let’s not even discuss the costumes.

Billie Piper as Fanny Price as Fanny Hill.

2. ) Mansfield Park 2007: Billie Piper as Fannie Price. *Hahahahah*. Fanny exhibiting ample cleavage in her day gown. *Loud guffaws*. Fanny athletic and running around with wild hair. *Snorts and sniggers*. Lady Bertram rising from her couch in the last scenes and showing spirit and gumption in uniting Fanny with Edmund. *WTF!?* An energized Lady Bertram is as egregious a change in character as a nice Lady CdeB. The reviews for this film in Rotten Tomatoes are so tepid that it has yet to acquire a ratings score. One wonders why the folks at ITV bothered to adapt this very thick JA novel and compress its tale to a bare 90 minutes. Might as well read a comic book version of MP.  ’Nuff said.

Tall, gorgeous, statuesque Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price.

3.) Mansfield Park 1999: In this adaptation, Frances O’Connor as Fanny is more beautiful and intriguing than Embeth Davidtz as Mary Crawford. In fact, one begins to wonder why Edmund is so drawn to Mary when the lovely, worshiping and nubile Fanny is his for the taking. I won’t go into detail about director and writer Patricia Rozema’s social stance on slavery and British empire exploitation in this film, since my observations in this post are meant to be tongue in cheek and light-hearted. Let’s just say that 1999 audiences were surprised to learn that somehow our dear departed Jane had quite clearly expressed her strong feelings on the topic to Patricia.

Gasping for breath and suffering a headache from that severe, unflattering updo, Annie goes after her man.

4.) Persuasion 2007: (Set to the theme of Rocky.) How I pitied poor Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot. I hope that she only had to run through Bath for a few takes. Imagine if the director hadn’t been  pleased with her stride, or if a jet’s drone ruined the scene, or if … whatever. It could not have been easy for her to race over stone sidewalks and streets in those delicate slipper and in full Regency regalia, with her hair pulled back so tightly that her ears and cheeks practically met in the back of her head. Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot would NEVER have run through town like a hoyden and debased herself for a man, not even the delectable Captain W. To quote Jeremy Northam in 1996s Emma when she made a joke at poor Miss Bates’s expense, “badly done.” Badly done, indeed.

Barefoot Lizzie swinging above the muck

5.) Pride and Prejudice 2005: Or the muddy hem edition. Good old Joe Wright wanted to put a different spin on P&P, so he set Longbourn House in the middle of a mud field, surrounded by a moat, and overrun by pigs, geese, and all manner of dirty, smelly farm animals. Then there’s Mr. Bennet (played by 70-something Donald Sutherland) rutting after Mrs. Bennet even though his respect for her intellect is less than zero. And who can forget the film’s breathy, candle lit American ending? – “Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy.” I don’t know which altered ending was worse – the one in which the co-conspirator in happiness and harmony is  Lady CdeB, or all that post-coital face licking at the end of this adaptation. This film should have been titled: Pride and Prejudice: back to nature.

P Firth is no Colin.

6.) Northanger Abbey 1986: Visually, this JA adaptation is quite lovely and interesting. But the music…Gawdalmity! It is so awful that this film should be seen with the sound muted. During the 70s and 80s, the male actor flavor du jour was Peter Firth. He played Angel in Tess and Henry Tilney in NA. Why? Just because he was good in Equus and for two milliseconds, when very young, looked somewhat leading mannish? I found him so off putting as Angel and Henry that P Firth single-handedly ruined those films for me. He could have played a Mr. Collins, Mr. Elton, or John Thorpe quite excellently. As he aged, P Firth began to portray villains, which is how I always saw him. But what I can least forgive this film for are those horrid gothic scenes (which the 2007 NA adaptation picked up.) I read NA and reread it, but, other than telling us about Catherine’s lively imagination and penchant for reading Gothic novels, JA included none of those scenes. To this day, I am still waiting for a decent Northanger Abbey (and Mansfield Park) film adaptation.

Can you recall scenes in JA films that made you cringe? Do share. As always, feel free to disagree with my humble opinions, but politely, please.

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Maintaining the grounds of a landed British estate: Georgian gardening

Great landed estates were symbols of the owner’s wealth and status in British society. Everything was put on grand display – from the exquisite architecture of the house itself to the furniture, jewels, silver plate, servants, books, carriages, horses, deer, game, forests, fields, and splendid grounds and gardens.

Longleat House in Wiltshire Image @www.longleat.co.uk

A fine estate certainly elevated a man in a lady’s estimation. Take this passage in Mansfield Park, written from Mary Crawford’s point of view:

Tom Bertram must have been thought pleasant, indeed, at any rate; he was the sort of young man to be generally liked, his agreeableness was of the kind to be oftener found agreeable than some endowments of a higher stamp, for he had easy manners, excellent spirits, a large acquaintance, and a great deal to say; and the reversion of Mansfield Park, and a baronetcy, did no harm to all this. Miss Crawford soon felt that he and his situation might do. She looked about her with due consideration,and found almost everything in his favour, a park, a real park, five miles round, a spacious modern-built house, so well placed and well screened as to deserve to be in any collection of engravings of gentlemen’s seats in the kingdom, and wanting only to be completely new furnished—pleasant sisters, a quiet mother, and an agreeable man himself—with the advantage of being tied up from much gaming at present, by a promise to his father, and of being Sir Thomas hereafter. ” – Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

(It is to Mary’s credit that, after this consideration, she prefered Edmund, the younger son, until she discovered that he intended to become a man of the cloth, and even then she did not give him up so easily.)

Visitors arriving at a landed estate took a circuitous route to the house along winding paths that were designed to show the grounds to their best advantage. They would pass through wooded areas and open fields, past lakes and rivers and herds of deer or cattle, and through a controlled wilderness area.

“The idea with Brownian landscapes is that you effectively go round them,” explains Mowl. “When [Capability] Brown did his landscape designs they would always have drives in them. They were an essential part of what he would do.” - The English Landscape Garden

Witton approach from Norwich, 1801, Humphrey Repton Red Book. Image @University of Florida Rare Book Collection

Groundskeepers of extensive parks that featured winding drives and a variety of formal and ornamental gardens employed several means of keeping grass under control. Grazing sheep and cattle represented the first lines of defense. These herds were allowed to roam over vast expanses of land. Eighteenth-century romantic sensibility required that nothing as obviously artificial as a visible fence be allowed to contain them.

Highclere Castle is surrounded by park land designed by Capability Brown. Grazing sheep in the foreground.

A landscape feature called a Ha-Ha prevented grazing herds from coming too close to the house. The Ha-Ha, which consisted of a deep trench abutting a wall and which was hidden from casual view even at a short distance, allowed for the naturalistic features of romantic landscape gardening to take hold.

The Ha-Ha prevented grazing animals from crossing from one area of the estate to another. Image © John D. Tatter, Birmingham-Southern College

A Ha-Ha was so named because, as the myth goes, this landscape feature was so well hidden that an unsuspecting visitor would blurt out “ha-ha!” before falling into the trench.  This cross section shows how the system worked.

The trenches of a Ha-Ha could sometimes be 8 feet deep.The primary view is from the right and the barrier created by the ha-ha becomes invisible from that direction and sometimes from both directions, unless close to the trench. Image @Wikipedia

Not all Ha-Ha’s prevented deer, sheep, or cattle from grazing up to the front of the house (though considering their droppings, one would thinks that this would be highly preferred.) At Petworth, the Ha-Ha was placed at the side of the house.

Petworth with Ha-Ha on the side of the house. Image @The English Landscape Garden

Built at the edge of a pleasure grounds surrounding a house, the ha-aha made a virtually invisible barrier that kept the cows and sheep in their pastures yet allowed uninterrupted views from house into park of from park into distant countryside. It meant that pleasure grounds, park and landscape could seamlessly become one. It is probably French in origin. Charles Bridgeman is generally credited with it’s introduction, but the first remnants of a ha-ha had already been installed at Levens Hall in Cumbria in 1689. - Architessica: Gardens and Landscapes

The transitional area between the formal gardens and the large park surrounding the house was known as the wilderness. This area was as meticulously planned as the other areas of the estate, but here the plantings were more irregular and included native plants and trees; gravel walkways; a pond, lake or river or all three; waterfalls; lawns that resembled meadows; and areas where the vistas were framed to deliberately look natural. If cottages and villages were required to be moved to achieve this picturesque effect, then so be it. The master’s will was done.

In Pride and Prejudice 1995, Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh conduct their heated discussion in Longbourn’s “wilderness”. No grazing required here.

These wilderness areas were unique to topography and region, for each estate was uniquely different.

Nature in Herefordshire is not like nature in Lancashire and the garden style that tries to emulate the same form everywhere (particularly
one imported from another country entirely) is destroying what Pope had called the genius loci.” – (Wildness in the English Garden Tradition: A Reassessment of the Picturesque from Environmental Philosophy Author(s): Isis Brook Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethics and the Environment, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 105-119)

This plan of Paca Garden in Annapolis, MD, shows the formal gardens separated from the park by a wilderness area with pond, bridge, and follies. Image (a) Creating a Period Garden

Walking along a wilderness provided one with an endless variety of aesthetic experiences. Paths wended their way through woods that opened up to vistas. Large trees provided shelter for a bench or revealed moss growing on gnarly roots. Rivers, ponds, follies, and bridges provided natural sources of visual patterns. They were pleasant places to visit:

 A ‘pleasant place’ is supposed to be naturally crafted. It’s a balance between two opposites: wanting to cultivate the land and letting it grow freely.  However landscapers and architects finally accomplish this goal, the product always ends up being a beautiful oxymoron. – Landscape as Amenity

Chawton House grounds. One of the vistas from a gravel path. Image @Tony Grant

The exercise of walking along a wilderness ground was both visually and physically stimulating. These wilderness areas took years to design and arrange, with large trees moved from one area to another, buildings demolished or transported, and hillsides lowered or raised to “improve” the view.

Moving a full grown tree into place, Hayes, 1794

Such improvements, as they were generally known, required meticulous planning and strenuous effort. Master landscape gardeners like Lancelot “Capability” Brown and  Humphry Repton became household names. Jane Austen knew about such efforts and their resulting changes:

Mr. Rushworth, however, though not usually a great talker, had still more to say on the subject next his heart. “Smith has not much above a hundred acres altogether, in his grounds, which is little enough, and makes it more surprising that the place can have been so improved. Now, at Sotherton, we have a good seven hundred, without reckoning the water meadows; so that I think, if so much could be done at Compton, we need not despair. There have been two or three fine old trees cut down that grew too near the house, and it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down; the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know,” turning to Miss Bertram particularly as he spoke. But Miss Bertram thought it most becoming to reply—

“The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of Sotherton.”

Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund, exactly opposite Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at him, and said, in a low voice—

“Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper ?’ Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.’”

He smiled as he answered, ” I am afraid the avenue stands a bad chance, Fanny.”

“I should like to see Sotherton before it is cut down, to see the place as it is now, in its old state , but I do not suppose I shall.” – Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

Sir Humphrey Repton, Whiton (Before) Image @British Architecture

Sir Humphry Repton left a valuable legacy with his Red Books. It was his habit to sketch before and after landscapes for his customers and present the drawings to them bound in red covers. His improvements for Whiton are subtle but important. Two parallel streams have been turned into a serpentine lake with a waterfall at one end. The distant fields provide a focal point with artfully arranged trees. If you look closely at the gravel path on the left, you can spy a gardener.

Sir Humphrey Repton, Whiton (After). Image @British Architecture

The samples below of Ferney Hall from The Morgan Library and Museum show the before and after drawing of an improved vista in which, using Jane Austen’s words, ” a prospect was opened”.

Ferney Hall by Repton. Image @The Morgan Library

The after image provides a glimpse of a folly. Instead of acting as a barrier, the woods give way to the scene, which provides a pleasant stopping point for the wanderer to sit and view. While such scenes looked natural, they were not.

Ferney Hall, After, by Repton. Image @The Morgan Library

Though visually the wild and the domestic were one is the same, “these were carefully managed scenes, designed to look natural, but actually contrived on a vast scale” - Landscape as Amenity

The wilderness was designed some distance from the house. Approaching closer, the visitor would see a more formal arrangement of fountains and shrubbery and mazes and flower gardens.

Chawton House: View from the wilderness towards the house and more formal plantings. Image @Tony Grant

The gentlemen who had these gardens designed for them had all been on the Grand Tour and learned the classics,” says Timothy Mowl of the University of Bristol. “It was part of their make-up and they wanted to display their taste and learning within gardens.” – The English Landscape Garden

Wrest Park, Bedfordshire. Image @The Telegraph UK

Landscape designs informed the process of maintaining the grounds. Large estates employed many gardeners to keep cricket and croquet fields in pristine condition, cultivate the ornamental and kitchen gardens, and oversee the orchards and hot houses. The question is: How did they do it?

Extensive gardens surrounding Wrest House in Bedfordshire. Wrest Park Gardens are spread over 150 acres (607,000 m²) near Silsoe, Bedfordshire, and were originally laid out in the early 18th century, probably by George London and Henry Wise for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, then modified by Capability Brown in a more informal landscape style, without sacrificing the parterres. Image from The Leisure Guide

As mentioned before, the first line of defense was allowing herds of sheep and cattle to graze. However, their by-products left something to be desired. (If anyone has ever walked through a cow pasture, they will know what I mean.)

English Garden at Leeds: Artfully contrived to look both contained and natural. Image @Landscape Into Land

Lawn mowing and ornamental landscaping held no particular interest to 99% of the people who lived during the Georgian era. Cottagers and town dwellers maintained small plots of vegetable gardens and laborers worked in the fields, using scythes to cut wheat and grain for their employers.

18th century method for harvesting grain with scythes. Image @Our Ohio

The laborers wielding scythes in the above image provide a clue to how grass was clipped – using a smooth, well-rehearsed motion, they worked in teams to cover large areas of ground. Their labor was cheap and they followed a system that included working in the morning when the ground was still damp.

Mowing Clover, late 19th c., by Arthur Verey

To prepare the lawn for scything, a gardener would:

“pole” the lawn first (swishing a long whippy stick across the grass to remove wormcasts) and … roll the ground to firm it and set the blades of grass in a uniform direction.” - Notes and Queries, The Guardian UK

19th Century Coalbrookdale Roller. Rolling the lawn tamped down the grass and seed, and promoted growth and strong roots. Image @jardinique.co.uk

The secret to maintaining a close-cropped lawn was to trim it frequently, about once a week. Lawn edges were best trimmed with sheep shearing clippers.

This gardening family is using shears, a rake, and a scythe in their cottage garden.

The grass was kept free of daisies with an instrument named a daisy grubber, which is the long-handled instrument with angled pick in the image below. Daisy grubbers are still sold today, as they apparently do the job well.

Dibbles and daisy grubber. Image @Garden History -Tools the Dibble

Dibbles were used to dig holes in the ground to plant seeds or bulbs, pry up roots, or jab weeds out between bricks and stone.

18th century gardener taking direction from a landscape designer. Note the man pruning the tree.

Even with these instruments, maintaining these large gardens took intensive labor. One can just imagine how much work was involved in protecting tender plants from insects and marauders, early frosts, and dry spells; and forcing exotic fruits and vegetables to grow out of season in hot houses.

Engelbrecht. 18th century German print of gardening – planting.

While improvements were made over the course of the 19th century, some customs remained the same:

“rich people used to show their wealth by the size of their bedding-plant list: 10,000 plants for a squire; 20,000 for a baronet; 30,000 for an earl and 50,000 for a duke. ” – Ernest Fields, Life in the Victorian Country House by Pamela Horn, p. 75.

Engelbrecht’s plate of an 18th century gardener working with flowers

Landed owners showed off their wealth through a variety of means, including the number of servants they employed.

Master and mistress in discussion with the head gardener

It was not unusual for a great estate to employ 60 – 100 gardeners. There was the full-time staff, consisting of a master gardener, who had begun his apprenticeship as a boy, and his assistants.

Pruning

Scottish gardeners were preferred, as it was thought that they had received the best training. Unmarried apprentice gardeners moved from estate to estate in order to gain experience and be promoted.

Dungbarrow

Junior staff worked long hours, around 60 hours a week, for, in addition to their gardening duties, they had to maintain the temperatures in glassed-in conservatories and meticulously care for archery, cricket, bowling and croquet lawns.

Woman using a rake

The master gardener hired local labor seasonally to help during peak times, so the number of laborers fluctuated.

The head gardener at the Thornham estate in Sussex at the end of the 19th century. Image by kitchen915

18th century garden cart and basket

With improvements in gardening equipment, including the invention of the lawn mower in 1830 by Edwin Beard Budding, machines began to take over the hard work of the scythe men.

First lawnmower invented by Edwin Beard Budding. Image @The Chronicle of Andrew Jackson, Wikispaces

I imagined a Regency gentleman pushing one in his regalia, and found this wonderful advertisement. After Budding’s initial invention, a variety of lawn mowers were invented, each improving on the other.

Mowing a lawn in 1832. Credit: Ann Ronan Picture Library / Heritage Images

Needless to say, large areas of lawn needed a more efficient method of keeping the grasses trimmed. As the 19th century progressed, horses were employed to pull large lawn mowing machines.

Horse pulling a lawn mower. Image @The Cultural Landscape Foundation

They wore special leather over shoes to protect fragile lawns, such as those shown in the image below.

Image @Jardinique

This short video on YouTube demonstrates how 18th century gardeners dealt with sudden cold snaps.

More on the topic:

• My Pinterest Board on Gardens in the 18th and 19th centuries
• Restoring the Ha-Ha at Stowe
• The English Landscape Garden: Petworth Park
• Humphrey Repton’s Red Books
• Humphrey Repton Witton Red Book, 1801
• 18th century gardening prints

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All Roads Lead to Austen: Book Giveaway and Q&A with Author Amy Elizabeth Smith

Inquiring Readers: All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith is now available through Sourcebooks. I will be reviewing this fabulous, intelligently written book later this week. Meanwhile, enjoy my interview with Ms. Smith about her Latin American adventure as she discusses Jane Austen’s novels en Español with Latin American book groups. All readers of this blog from any country can enter a contest to win a copy of this charming book. Please click on this link and leave your comment. Make sure to leave a way I can reach you. Contest is now closed!

Amy, I love that Jane Austen, a spinster who didn’t travel far or frequently in her lifetime, is so beloved the world wide over. Which country surprised you most in terms of her popularity there and why?

I found translations of Austen left and right in bookstores in Argentina. I met plenty of people there who’d read Austen and liked her or who’d seen film adaptations of her novels and enjoyed them. And the Jane Austen Society of Buenos Aires was the first Austen society in South America. But sometimes it’s hard not to be influenced by stereotypes about people — I’d heard that Chileans were “the English of South America,” so somehow I thought Austen would be popular in Chile. But when I was living in Santiago, the capital (which I absolutely loved), a number of people told me Austen’s not very well known in Chile.

As for Argentineans, I’d heard over and over from people in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and other places that Argentineans are, well, pretty arrogant. Other latinos kept passing on jokes like, “When Argentineans see lightening, what do they think is happening? They think it’s God, taking their picture!” So, I guess I got the idea that Argentineans might think Austen was stuffy or old fashioned or some such thing. But she’s popular, at least in Buenos Aires, according to my experiences.

What aspects of that particular culture do you think Jane would have enjoyed the most?

Bookstores, bookstores, bookstores. I had great experiences in bookstores all over Latin America, but Argentina — and Buenos Aires specifically — really is the bookstore capital of South America. It’s so easy for us now to take for granted that we can get our hands on just about any book we want, any time. We’ve got access to bookstores, next-day delivery with websites, and good public libraries. And electronic readers have made it easier than ever — just order whatever book you want, wherever you are on the planet! But imagine what it must have been like for an imaginative, inquisitive reader like Austen — how often did she ever set foot in a bookstore? How often could she afford to pay for books from a circulating library? How many books did her family or friends or neighbors actually own? I think Austen would have fainted from sheer pleasure at the sight of bookstore after bookstore on Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires.

Librerias Libertador: One of my favorite bookstores on Corrientes, in Buenos Aires

Jane Austen fans cross all religious boundaries. Can you identify any characteristics that Janeites share across the world, besides their obvious love for Jane Austen’s novels?

I honestly can’t speak for many places beyond Latin America (although I might try a next project in some other interesting countries!). But I suspect that there’s a kind of optimism that people — especially women — love about Austen. Her leading ladies find love, not in spite of being strong and intelligent, but because of it. That’s a pretty appealing idea in a world were, in many places, women are still told they’d better not appear too smart, or they’ll scare men off.

What were some of your most memorable experiences in writing this book?

I actually started the book while I was still traveling, although I didn’t finish it until after my trip was done. I wrote the first portion on Guatemala while I was living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I was living well away from the tourist area, renting a partially-finished house that had glass in only one or two windows, so it was pretty noisy — street vendors would cruise by with loudspeakers, selling ice cream, vegetables, you name it. The people across the street had a huge bird caged outside their house that shrieked and chattered like a demon. And animals would wander in at will — there was one very persistent cat that kept making me jump out of my skin by appearing under my writing table with no warning.

There were animals all over the place in that neighborhood — no leash laws for dogs, and some of the neighbors had roosters and other farm animals. When I wanted a break from writing, I’d wander out to buy groceries or take my clothes to the laundromat. I always carried them in a plastic bag, and there was this goat a few houses down from me that was only tied up about half of the time. When it was loose, it usually ignored me, but when I had that plastic bag with laundry, it would come bolting after me — maybe its food came in a plastic bag, and it thought I had something good to eat? Or maybe it knew I had laundry and really wanted to eat my socks. Who knows. Sometimes I actually miss that goat — laundry day’s not the same without it.

A friendly neighborhood rooster from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Thank you, Amy, for your wonderful insights and good luck with your book. (I just love the cover!) Is there anything else you would like my readers to know about All Roads Lead to Austen?

Amy Elizabeth Smith

I had two main sources of inspiration for this book — Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and my own Jane Austen students at the University of the Pacific, in California. Readers can enjoy All Roads as a fun opportunity to sit back and be an armchair traveler, but I’d also love it if the book inspired some other international journey I could sit back and read about. Austen in China? Turkey? Belgium? Bora Bora? I’d love to see somebody else take on a journey like this with Jane. Even if they don’t want to write a whole book about it — I’d love to have people share reading-on-the-road stories on my website (http://allroadsleadtoausten.com/). Consider that an official invitation! And thanks so much for letting me visit here at Jane Austen’s World!

To Enter the Contest: Please make sure to leave your comment on Jane Austen Today at this link. The first two comments left on this post will be included in the random number generator drawing at midnight EST USA time on June 11. Please leave all other comments on Jane Austen Today. Make sure to leave a way I can reach you. 

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The Distinctions of the Regency Dandy

Since the 18th century, satirists have had a fun time mocking dandies. In Hogarth to Cruickshank: social change in graphic satire, 1967, (Walker Publishing)  Mary Dorothy George classified 3 different kinds of print-shop dandies: 1.) the notorious dandy, 2) the effeminate dandy, and 3) dandies who were slavish in their imitation of  Beau Brummel.

Buckskin breeches, clawhammer coat, and riding boots. This ensemble from the Kyoto Costume Institute could well have been worn by Mr. Darcy as he toured the grounds of Pemberley.

I would add to those categories two more distinctions: the powerful dandy and the ridiculous dandy, or one who, from behavior or social standing, is a wholly ridiculous and insignificant creature. The latter exquisites, along with the slavish imitators and effeminate dandies, were fodder for cartoonists, especially Robert and Isaac Cruikshank, who took great glee in lampooning them in a series of hand colored engravings.

This exquisite was a wholly ridiculous creature, a true fashion victim.

According to Jane Rendell in a Pursuit of Pleasure, the word dandy may have originated from “jack-a-dandy”, a Scottish description of a person dressing up at a fair. The word dates back to the late 18th century/early 19th centuries. In the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1788, Francis Grose describes the dandy:

Dandy.  That’s the dandy;  i.e. the ton, the clever thing

Dandy.  grey Russet. A dirty brown. His coat’s dandy grey russet the colour of the Devil’s nutting bag.

Dandy. Prat. An insignificant or trifling fellow.

An effeminate dandy required a great deal of care. Cruikshank.

Much later, the word “dandy” is used to describe “Satinist” – Obs. rare”1, [f. Satin sb. + -ist.] A wearer of satin, a dandy. A new English dictionary on historical principles: founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society, Volume 8, Part 2, 1914.

Beau Brummel’s influence in modifying men’s behavior and dress ranged far and wide, influencing the Prince Regent and his set.

Prinny’s set, or the Prince Regent’s friends, consisted of the Earl of Sefton, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Manners, “Poodle” Bing, and the Duke of Beaufort, serious dandies all. Somber and rich, these men epitomized the powerful, restrained dandy. Image @The Georgian Index

In Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England, Issue 33; Issue 61, Roger Sales identifies Henry Crawford and Tom Bertram of Mansfield Park as dandies: Tom because he is the quintessential Regency sports man, as well as rich and handsome; Henry, because of his mode of address, which shows a haughty attitude towards rural workers, and because he fashions his conversation “into exquisity little mirrors to reflect his own sense of superiority.” Henry makes elegant bows and frequently mocks others. His manners, like Beau Brummel’s, verge frequently on insolence – his stance is one of ennui and superiority at the same time. While Henry is not as handsome as Tom, he commands a room with his personality. I would classify Tom and Henry as notorious dandies, for both pushed the limits of what was considered proper behavior. The more modest Edmund Bertram would never behave like either man.

Hessian boots

John Thorpe of Northanger Abbey belongs in the category of the ridiculous dandy. He drives a gig, but imagines it to rival a phaeton, which is like comparing a toyota corrolla to a sleek jaguar. John uses cant, and one imagines that his clothes are too loud and his shirt points too high.

Great coat with numerous capes, a favorite menswear item described by romance writers.

As for Mr. Darcy, his looks and dress are effortlessly elegant. He doesn’t try to impress; he simply is a superior man. His arrogance, which Elizabeth Bennet found so off putting at first, comes naturally, for he is placed securely high in society. His inheritance and the cares, responsibilities and duties that great wealth bring exemplify the qualities of a gentleman who is a cut above the rest.  Beau Brummel, I imagine, would have found very little fault with Mr. Darcy.

Two dandies by Cruikshank dresssed to the nines. While exquisitely rigged out, they take tea in a mean hovel of a room. Note the ragged curtains and table cloth, the dishes on the floor and the wash hanging on the line overhead.

While the term dandy has come to mean many things, among my favorite cartoons of the Regency era are those that make sport of them. These caricatures must have been popular then, and are irresistible to view now.

• The Pursuit of Pleasure, Jane Rendell
• A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Pratt, 1788
• The Dandy’s Velocipede Revisited
• George Bryan Brummel’s Eccentricities
• The Regency Dandy’s Corset
• Louis Bazalgette, The Prince Regent’s Tailor

A Dandy Fainting, or an Exquisite in Fits, Cruikshank. This scene at a private box at the opera gives one a sense of how similar it is to today’s private boxes at a stadium. Note the table with food and drink; the couch, and the curtain that allowed for privacy.

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John Murray, Bookseller and Publisher of Jane Austen Novels

Inquiring readers:  Once again, Tony Grant, who lives in London, has written his unique insights about historical events in that great city. This week he concentrates on John Murray, the publisher of four of Jane Austen’s six completed novels. Tony’s contributions to this blog are unique in that he includes his photographs of modern London and mingles them with more traditional illustrations. Read Tony’s blog, London Calling, at this link.

Image @Wikimedia Commons

John Murray
Bookseller and Publisher
Born 1st January 1737
Died 6th November 1793
Lived and conducted business here.
1768 – 1793

On Tuesday 13th March, my son Sam and I had a day out in central London. My brother Michael, who lives in Grenaa on Jutland, is over here with thirty students. Michael teaches mathematics in a further education college in Grenaa. He has lived in Denmark for over thirty years. A couple of weeks ago he phoned me and asked if I could do a Dickens tour of London for his students. On Tuesday Sam and I walked the route I will take Michael’s students. A Dickens walk is difficult. There are so many places in London that have strong links with Dickens.

Image @Wiki Spaces. Click on site.

It is more about what to leave out than what to include. Connecting them all in a walk that will take just over an hour would be impossible. I looked carefully at a map of London to see what places could be linked most appropriately. I think I have chosen a rout that includes many of the main sites connected with Dickens working life in London. I have decided to begin at Hungerford Bridge the site of Hungerford Steps and Warren’s Blacking Factory where Charles Dickens worked as a young child sticking labels on bottles of black polish.

The Blacking Factory where Dickens worked. Image @The Mirror. Click here to see more.

The walk will be along The Strand, past The Adelphi Theatre, to Wellington Street, the Lyric Theatre and then on to Covent Garden before walking on to The Old Curiosity Shop, Lincolns Inn , Chancery Lane, Holborn High Street, past Grays Inn and finally ending at 48 Doughty Street, one of the houses Dicken’s lived in and now The Dickens Museum. Sam and I felt very pleased with ourselves. The walk flowed nicely, punctuated with plenty of Dicken’s sites and the timing was about right. We retraced ours steps, this time continuing down Chancery Lane to the Strand and turning left until we got to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, in Fleet Street.

Fleet Street and The Royal Courts of Justice. Image @Tony Grant

Dickens, some of his characters and many other writers and famous people have graced these premises. After a pub lunch in the cellared depths of this ancient establishment we tracked back along Fleet Street towards The Royal Courts of Justice. I just happened to glimpse a small plaque attached to a pillar to one side of a narrow alleyway leading to a small courtyard behind. It read:

Image @Tony Grant

I stopped in my tracks. I thought this must be Jane Austen’s publisher. However the dates did not tally. Jane’s first novel, published by John Murray, was Emma in 1815, long after the final date of death on the plaque. I took photographs of the plaque and courtyard at the end of the alleyway and pictures of Fleet Street, running along outside. When I got home I researched John Murray and found the John Murray publishing firm website.

THIS IS A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PUBLISHING FIRM OF JOHN MURRAY.

The first John Murray, who lived from 1737 to 1793, started his working life as a Lieutenant in the Marines. Life as a marine officer in the 18th century was spent on board naval men of war and consisted of travelling the world to defend the British Empire. It wasn’t a particularly well paid or thought of profession. In Mansfield Park , Fanny’s mother, Frances , the younger Ward sister,

British marine, 1775. Image @Mock Attack

…….married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a Lieutenant of Marines, without education, fortune, or connections, did it very thoroughly.”

John Murray must have had a natural inclination towards business and when he acquired a publishing and bookselling business in Fleet Street in 1768 he made it into a successful business now passed down through the generations. The fact that he acquired a publishing business must mean that it was left to him, perhaps in a will. As a lieutenant of marines it is doubtful he would have had the finances to buy it and it seems a strange choice of business for somebody with his background. He must have acquired it through inheritance and an accident of fate.

The John Murray office was in Falcon Court. Image @Tony Grant

As an indication of his business acumen he was one of the first publishers to actually consider the quality of the writing he published. He also used his many contacts to help sell large quantities of his books. He was a canny businessman though and hedged his bets by also selling game, which would have included deer, pheasants and rabbits; the produce of country sports. He had a go at selling paste jewels and lottery tickets too.

John Murray (or MacMurray, as the name was originally spelt), having bought the stock and goodwill of William Sandley, who had turned banker, began at the ‘Falcon,’ otherwise No. 32 Fleet Street, that remarkable and prosperous career which has culminated in the great publishing house of Murray. In Smiles’ book on the Murrays will be found an exhaustive account of the inception, by Lieutenant MacMurray, of this great firm. - Fleet Street and the Press

Image @Tony Grant

He was astute enough to go with what was most profitable. Books worked for him though. I suppose if the selling of game, he was virtually a butcher as well as a bookseller, paste jewellery or the selling of lottery tickets had provided more income for him the publishing side may well have not contiued and Jane would not have had her publisher in the next John Murray but may well have been buying venison from him instead.

Image @Tony Grant

John Murray II. Image @Austenonly. (Published with permission from Julie Wakefield.)

John Murray’s son John Murray II began to develop the business. He was successful at signing Walter Scott who helped him, among others, such as the secretaries of the admiralty, John Wilson Croker and Sir John Barrow and writers such as Robert Southey and Charles Lamb to publish The Quarterly Review. This journal continued until 1967. In 2007 it was revived. The concept behind it is

to draw upon a wide range of opinions to provide counter-intuitive writing for people who like to think, and to enhance literary, philosophical and political debate.”

50 Albemarle Street. Image @Tony Grant

In it’s early years it tried to counter social reforms. It was rather conservative in it’s views but it did back the abolition of slavery although advocating a slow approach to the process.

50 Albemarle Street. Image @Tony Grant

In 1812, John Murray II published Childe Harold by Byron and it was a great success. This gave Murray the confidence to mortgage some of his copyrights and purchase 50 Albemarle Street, which has remained the home of the publishing firm for the last two hundred years.

Albemarle Street. Image @Tony Grant

John Murray drawing room. Image @Playwright in the cages

The drawing room in Albemarle Street has been the meeting place for some of the most famous writers in English history. By 1815, and after the Battle of Waterloo, everybody wanted to be published by John Murray. It seems therefore that Henry Austen, Jane’s banker brother, must have had no little influence in obtaining Murray as his sister’s publisher. She was an unknown country girl. Why should he take her on? On the other hand he might have had great literary sense and was in the habit of reading unsolicited scripts.

Jane Austen's brother, Henry.

Jane herself was very business like with John Murray. She wrote to him on Monday 11th December 1815 from Hans Place, Henry’s house in London:

Dear Sir,

As I find that Emma is advertised for publication as early as Saturday next, I think it best to lose no time in settling all that remains to be settled on the subject, & adopt this method of doing so, as involving the smallest tax on your time.

In the first place, I beg you to understand that I leave the terms on which the Trade should be supplied with the work, entirely to your judgement entreating you to be guided in every such arrangement by your own experience of what is most likely to clear off the Edition rapidly, I shall be satisfied with whatever you feel to be the best.-“

She appears to be quite the pragmatist. It is significant to note that Murray would publish four of her six completed novels: Emma and Mansfield Park while she was alive, and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey after her death.

Image @Austenprose. Click on link to read post.

In the nineteenth century, the John Murray firm began publishing a series of travel books called the Murray Handbooks, which were authored by many of the great explorers of the time. The men included Sir John Franklin, who, in 1847, died exploring the North West Passage. He had also spent many years mapping the coast line of Canada. Murray also published David Livingstone, the explorer of the heart of Africa; Sir John Barrow, who wrote about South Africa; Heinrich Schlieman, the excavator and discoverer of Troy; and Isabella Bird, who visited north America and the pacific Islands. Her trips were financed by her father to help her counteract depression and backache. Both symptoms were cured in her travels: John Murray published “The Englishwoman in America,” and “Six Months in The Sandwich Islands,” both written by her about her travels.

Scientists and inventors chose to be published through John Murray. They included Charles Babbage, Malthus and Lyell who wrote in 1830 “Principles of Geology,” which later inspired Charles Darwin. In 1859, the firm published Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and Samuel Smiles’ Self Help.

John Murray III was one of the official publishers of the Great Exhibition held in Hyde park in 1851. This exhibition promoted the industrial, economic, and military might of the Empire, although all nations were invited to contribute exhibits.

Great Exhibition

The proceeds form the exhibition were later used to create, The Albert Hall, The Science Museum, The Natural History Museum, and The Victoria and Albert museum. This area of London today is still called “Albertropolis,” because Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, sponsored The Great Exhibition and the forming of the Kensington Museums. John Murray faced some opposition from some quarters when he published Queen Victoria’s letters after she died.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria announce the opening of the Great Exhibition. Image @Getty Images.

In 1917 John Murray bought the rival publisher Smith Elder, and so added Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to their list.

John Murray, IV. Image @John Murray Archive

In the 1930’s John Murray IV entered the firm and built up an impressive list of twentieth century writers including John Betjamin, Osbert Lancaster and Freya Stark amongst others.

In 2002 John Murray was sold to Hodder Headline, which in turn became part of Hachette UK. The company continues to publish and prosper continuing with new ideas and new authors in all fields.

As a footnote, if there is anybody reading this thinking that they would like to be published by John Murray they have a note on their website:

Submissions

Owing to the amount of time devoted to assessing solicited or commissioned work John Murray is no longer able to accept any unsolicited manuscripts or synopses, or to enter into any correspondence about them. The best way to go about getting published is to find a literary agent, who can give you advice about your work and who will know the best publishers for the kind of book you are writing.

You can find a list of literary agents in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, published by A&C Black, or in The Writer’s Handbook or From Pitch to Publication by Carole Blake, both published by Pan.

• The John Murray Archive
• The John Murray Archive has an App!
• Letter Written by Jane Austen, April 1, 1816
• Albemarle Street History
• Letters Pertaining to the Printing and Dedication of Emma: Emma Adaptations
• Jane Austen and London: A Visit to Carlton House

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Toy Theatres: 19th Century Entertainment

It is hard to imagine what entertainment was like in the days before the 21st century, yet people have always devised ways to spend their leisure time in pleasant company doing amusing things. In the evening, Jane Austen and her family spent many hours entertaining each other. One popular form of entertainment that the older Austen siblings would have known about was the Toy Theatre, or a juvenile form of miniature theater.

Toy Theatre. Image @Tea at Triannon

This entertainment appeared in the early 1800s, and coincided with the popularity of theater and the rise of the print trade. One can imagine that Aunt Jane was well aware of toy theatres when she spent time with her nephews, for this new toy largely attracted boys.

By 1811 William West of London was printing sheets of stage characters for purchasers to colour, paste on cardboard and cut out, though others treasured them as individual portraits. Single prints in black ink on white paper were called “penny plains” while those with color added by the seller were the “twopence coloured.” West’s first subject was Joseph Grimaldi in “Mother Goose,” a role that brought him fame and lifelong success on the stage. – NYPL Digital Gallery

Image @Curator's Choice

Miniature theaters became fashionable all over Europe, and their tiny elaborate sets mimicked the grand theaters of London, Paris and other world stages. The sets remained popular throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century, offering children an opportunity to exercise their imaginations and their acting chops. Some children, I imagine, concentrated on honing their acting skills, while others probably enjoyed their roles as directors or scene designers more. New plays were published in the first half of the 19th century.

After the 1860′s no new plays were published but much of the old repertoire was kept in print by a dwindling number of theatrical print publishers and the tradition continued unbroken until 1944 when Miss Louisa Pollock,shut up her father’s famous shop in Hoxton for ever and sold the contents as a going concern. – Toy Theatre Gallery: History

Image @ Rossetti Archives

From Mansfield Park the reader gains a sense of how seriously family theatricals were regarded. In the novel, the men were definitely in control of the enterprise, with the women acquiescing to their direction (the only exception being Fanny). While Jane Austen described a real play, Lover’s Vows, with large, almost life-like sets in Sir Thomas Bertram’s study, wood toy theatres that sat on a tabletop would be taken equally seriously. The children must have spent hours preparing for a performance, arranging sets, learning lines, and dressing and moving their characters before they felt comfortable opening a new play in front of an indulgent and forgiving family.

English Toy Theatre, 1850. Pollock's Museum. Image @Brittanica

Created from printed paper glued to cardboard and then mounted on wooden frames, these theaters could be quite intricate in design. They offered a proscenium, scenery, cut-out characters with codified attitudes and gestures, and a booklet that contained stage and scene directions and dialogue for the actors. Almost all of them depict an orchestra: The clothes worn by the musicians give a good indication of when the theatre was designed.

Early toy theatre prints were made from engraved copper plates, the engravings often from sketches made at the theatre on the night. Sets, costumes, and even the actors’ likenesses were copied, and could often be recognised. - Miniature Theatre: Curator’s Choice

Image @Victoriana

The plays were not necessarily derived from children’s stories: They were adapted from operas, melodramas, history, novels, and pantomimes. Works from Shakespeare, Cervantes, Mozart, and Beethoven were included. Hans Christian Anderson was also an inspiration.

Children could choose “Three-Fingered Jack, the Terror of Jamaica” or “Hamlet” or another of the nearly 300 “juvenile dramas” printed in England between 1811 and 1860. – Dramas to Cut, Color, and Produce

Image @The Museum of Every Day life

The involvement of publishers was enormous, but Pollock’s toy theatres were probably the most famous in Great Britain.

England had over 50 publishers, Germany 54, Spain 14, France 13, Denmark 10, Austria 9, and the United States 5. All of these versions to some degree were derived from the ability to mass produce the printed image, initially from engraved copper plates, followed by color lithography in the mid-19th century. – A Child’s View: 19th Century Paper Theaters

Toy theatre in a Victorian parlor

Many printed sheets of cut- out characters survive to this day, both colored and in black and white.

In 1811 William West produces a sheet of the principal characters from the first production on the London stage of ‘Mother Goose’, with Joseph Grimaldi in one of his most celebrated roles of Clown. The popularity of this role led to the publication of sets of sheets of characters, scenery and props, also elaborate prosceniums, the designs based on those of popular London theatres. Books of words, abridged versions of the most popular melodramas and pantomimes to be seen on the London stage.

From this time the popularity of the toy theatre, also known as the ‘Juvenile Drama’, saw the rapid growth in the number of publishers producing versions of plays, with the drawings for the engravings made by such leading artists as Georg e Cruickshank and William Blake. The legacy of the 19th century toy theatre is that of the most complete documentation of the costumes, scenery, and the performance style of the actors of the London Theatres of the period. – The World Through Wooden Eyes: A Penny Plain and Two Pence Coloured

Paper backdrops image @Birds of Ohio

These backdrops for miniature theaters on Birds of Ohio show how much detail the sets provided.

Below is a very rare example from the V&A shows a souvenir from a play  first performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden  in 1800 called Harlequin’s Tour or the Dominion of  Fancy. While the souvenir survives, the dialogue for the play does not.

Souvenir, 1800. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum

In a June 2011 The Telegraph article, Sir Roy Strong, former director of the V&A museum and National Portrait Gallery, recalls his toy theatre with great affection:

Image @The Telegraph

This toy theatre … reminds me of one enormously happy period of my childhood. It was given to me after the war and purchased at Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop, originally in the East End of London [now in Covent Garden]. I played with all the cut–out cardboard figures and scenery, and still have all my toy theatre plays, which are 19th–century dramas, romances and pantomimes. The theatre sits in the archive room and I love it. It’s been with me everywhere.

More on the topic:

• Miniature paper theaters of Martin Englebrecht 
• A Child’s View
• Toy Theatre Test Model: A Modern View
• The Play’s the Thing: A History of the Toy Theatre in Three Acts
• Colored Toy Theatre Print
• Theatres and plays to download for free
• The Waterman, PDF downloadable files
• Dramas to Cut, Color, and Produce

Modern characters for The Waterman.

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Muslin: A Beautiful & Versatile Cloth for Regency Fashion

We’ve all come to associate Regency women’s fashion with delicate white muslin fabrics – sprigged muslin, spotted muslin,  checked and striped muslin, and embroidered muslin. Henry Tilney, the hero in Northanger Abbey, was well-acquainted with muslins through his sister, who wore only white.

Sheer white muslin gown with whitework embroidery. Image @Vintage Textile

In the 17th century and until the late 18th century, England imported muslin, a thin cotton material, from India.  The British East India Company traded in Indian cotton, silk fabrics, and Dacca (Dhaka or modern-day Bangladesh) muslins. Muslins from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa were also imported. The delicate cloth, which first originated in the Middle East in the 9th century, was perfect for clothing and curtains in hot, arid countries. - Muslin: Encyclopedia Britannica

Muslin gown, 1816

Muslin was a finely woven light cotton fabric in plain weave without a pattern, and had identical warp and weft threads. The fabric selection is quite flexible, coming in a wide variety of weights and widths. It accepts dyes and paints so successfully that today it is often used for theatrical backdrops and photographic portraits. One observation must be made: muslins of the past were made of much finer, more delicate weave than today’s muslins. -  How Is Muslin Fabric Made?

Buttons on a modern muslin fabric

Muslin gown circa 1815, Bath museum

An important feature of muslin fabrics is its ability to drape. Regency fashions were based on robes and garments from antiquity. The ability to drape and maneuver the fabric on the figure was an important feature of this cloth. Today, designers use muslin as a test garment for cutting and draping a design before creating the final dress from more expensive fabrics.

Another excellent feature of muslin is its ability to take dye, paints, and embroidery. The cloth accepted many patterns, motifs and designs that made it versatile and unique. - Textile as Art

Plus the white fabric was a mark of gentility. White was difficult to keep clean or required constant cleaning. It was one thing for an aristocratic lady like Eleanor Tilney to wear white, but another for a maid to presume to wear such a high maintenance garment. Mrs Norris, that awful woman from Mansfield Park, approved of Mrs. Rushworth’s housekeeper’s action of turning away two housemaids for wearing white gowns.

Muslin evening dress. Image @Metropolitan Museum of Art

Embroidery transformed the simple white muslin gown into works of art. Whitework embroidery was particularly striking, but colored threads could be equally beautiful. The draping quality of the cloth lent itself well to columnar-shaped empire waist gowns.

Indian sprigged muslin gown, 1800. Image@Kelly Taylor Auctions Trouvais

Muslin was imported from the Far East for centuries. Then the weavers in west Scotland, who were proficient in spinning fine cottons such as linen, cambric, and lawn, began to pay attention to weaving a finer, more delicate cloth.

Sheer muslin gown, 1800. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum

Muslins, therefore (plain for the most part in Glasgow, and fancy ornamented in Paisley),were among the earliest and principal cotton fabrics produced on the looms of the west of Scotland. About the year 1780 James Monteith, the father of Henry Monteith, the founder of the great printworks at Barrowfield, and of the spinning and weaving mills at Blantyre, warped a muslin web, the first attempted in Scotland; and he set himself resolutely to try to imitate or excel the famous products of Dacca and other Indian muslin-producing centres. As the yarn which could then be produced was not fine enough for his purposes, he procured a quantity of “bird-nest” Indian yarn, “and employed James Dalziel to weave a 6-4th 12″ book with a handshuttle, for which he paid him 2Id. per ell for weaving;. It is worthy of remark that the same kind of web is now wrought at 2|d. per ell The second web was wove with a-fly shuttle, which was the second used in Scotland. The Indian yarn was so difficult to wind that Christian Gray, wife of Robert Dougall, bellman, got 6s. 0 J. for winding each pound of it. When the web was finished Mr Monteith ordered a dress of it to be embroidered with gold, which had presented to Her Majesty Queen Charlotte.”1

1817 Muslin day dress. Image @Bowes Museum

Once fairly established, the muslin trade and various other cotton manufactures developed with extraordinary rapidity, and diverged into a great variety of products which were disposed of through equally numerous channels. Among the earliest staples, along with plain book muslins, came mulls, jacconets or nainsooks, and checked and striped muslins. Ginghams and pullicats formed an early and very important trade with the West Indian market, as well as for home consumption. These articles for a long period afforded the chief employment to the hand-loom weavers in the numerous villages around Glasgow and throughout the west of Scotland. The weaving of sprigged or spotted muslins and lappets was subsequently introduced, the latter not having been commenced till 1814. Although the weaving of ordinary grey calico for bleaching or printing purposes has always held .and still retains an important place among Glasgow cotton manufactures, it has never been a peculiar feature of the cotton industry; and the very extensive bleaching and print-works of the locality have always been supplied with a proportion of their material from the great cotton manufacturing districts of Lancashire. – p 501, The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature, Volume 6, Thomas Spencer Bayne, 1888.

Embroidered muslin round gown, 1795. Image @Cathy Decker

More on the topic:

• The Grove encyclopedia of decorative arts, Volume 1 By Gordon Campbell, 2006.
• Descriptions of various cloths: very informative, on The Dreamstress
• Textile as Art
• The Little White Regency Dress, Jane Austen’s World
• Embroidered muslin gown, Cathy Decker’s site

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18th Century Umbrellas

Mansfield Park, Brock. Image @Austenprose

During the 17th century, ladies used parasols for protection from the sun. A century later they were using oiled umbrellas as protection from the rain as well. By the early 19th century, the design of the umbrella had improved and its use had become widespread. After Maria’s marriage, Fanny Price was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage and sought shelter under an oak. When the Grants spotted her, they sent out a servant, but Fanny was reluctant to come in:

A civil servant she had withstood but when Dr Grant himself went out with an umbrella there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed and to get into the house as fast as possible; and to poor Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her plans of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty four hours, the sound of a little bustle at the front door and the sight of Miss Price dripping with wet in the vestibule was delightful. – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Beauty in search of knowledge, 1782. This 18th century woman carries an early version of an umbrella. These models were heavy and cumbersome. Image @Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College

A century before Mansfield Park was published (1814) men did not use umbrellas, which were regarded as women’s accessories:

A young man who borrowed one from a coffee house in a downpour in 1709 was excoriated as effeminate in a newspaper. It would have been a cumbersome model, ill-suited to being carried around. Similar heavy umbrellas were kept in churches to protect the parson during burial services. – A Brief History of the Umbrella 

Yet the following passage from Notes and queries, Volume 54, William White (Oxford University Press, 1876,  p. 202), suggests that men began to use umbrellas earlier than Jonas Hanway, who braved ridicule from street urchins and hackney coachmen, who regarded the use of the umbrella as a threat to their livelihood:

1745 – Paid for umbrella, box and carriage.
It is not stated for whose use this was intended; most probably for the minister when officiating at funerals. This is a remarkable entry, as the introduction of umbrellas into England is attributed to a much later period. The employment of the umbrella in the streets London is said to have been by Jonas Hanway, who died in 1786; but the following passage from the Trivia of Gay, who died in 1732, shows it was in use at a much earlier period

Good housewives Defended by th’ umbrella’s oily shed,
Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread.”

Wet under foot, James Gillray. Image @Wikigallery. The woman is wearing "clinking" pattens as well as carrying an umbrella.

In 1893, Georgiana Hill wrote this descriptive history of the umbrella in England:

Umbrellas were a recent fashion in the earlier part of the century. During the first ten years of George the Third’s reign, the only umbrellas in use were large carriage umbrellas, which required an attendant to hold them. In the country they were hardly known at all. The philanthropist, Jonas Hanway, in 1756, boldly unfurled an umbrella in the streets of London, being the first man who ventured upon such an innovation. Surely Hanway deserves to be held in grateful remembrance by the male sex for this spirited effort towards the emancipation of his brethren from the thraldom of custom. He was jeered and ridiculed by the populace, but was not to be laughed into giving up the sheltering oilskin. About twenty years later, a valiant footman named John Macdonald began to use a silk umbrella, which he had brought from Spain. The boys shouted after him: “Frenchman, why don’t you get a coach?” but he grasped his umbrella more firmly and went on his way, and in some three months time he was able to use it without exciting remark. Miss J. Gay Trivia Hutton, writing in 1779 from Derbyshire, says: “Mrs Greaves lent us their umbrella, and servant to carry it.” Miss Hutton’s brother was the person to use an umbrella in Birmingham, a Frenchman being the first.

Jonas Hanway. Image @Wikipedia. This caricature depicts how long early umbrella handles were.

The town beau, when he first carried an umbrella, was caricatured in the prints as the rain-beau holding a tiny parasol over his head. A gentleman once borrowed an umbrella from the mistress of a coffee- house in Cornhill, and after the following satirical advertisement in The Female Tatler: “The young gentleman belonging to the Custom house, that for fear of rain borrowed the umbrella from Will’s Coffee house in Cornhill, of the mistress, is hereby advertised to be dry from head to foot on the like occasion he shall be welcome to the maid’s pattens.”

A meeting of umbrellas, James Gillray, 1782. By now, men used umbrellas as a matter of course.

An illustration of the want of umbrellas afforded in one of the caricatures of the period, showing a respectable citizen’s family from Vauxhall in a downpour of rain – the old gentleman with a handkerchief tied over his head to save his wig, and his wife’s cardinal on his to protect his best coat, while the wife herself and her daughters are tripping along in gowns turned up round their waists, and their heads enveloped in coloured handkerchiefs. In 1797 there was one umbrella in all Cambridge, and that was kept at a shop, and let out like a sedan chair ,by the hour. In London women carried umbrellas before men had taken to them, but the first umbrellas were heavy awkward machines made of oilskin or taffeta. Still, in spite of their cumbrous character, women who had to trudge along the streets on rainy days rejoiced in their shelter. With cloak and umbrella, they were able to face the dripping roofs and waterspouts, which were as much to be avoided as the rain. To the fashionable lady. who only walked in fine weather, the one important consideration was the parasol, but it was otherwise with the thrifty citizeness. Great must have been the relief and saving of clothes when the new invention came into use:

Good housewives all the winter’s rage despise,
Defended by the riding hood’s disguise;
Or underneath the umbrella’s oily shade,
Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread.
Let Persian dames the umbrella’s ribs display,
To guard their beauties from the sunny ray;
Or sweating slaves support the shady load,
When Eastern monarchs show their state abroad;
Britain in winter only knows its aid,
To guard from chilling showers the walking maid.”
- J Gay Trivia

- A history of English dress from the Saxon period to the present day, Volume 1, By Georgiana Hill , 1893, p. 173-74.

The Umbrella, 1820. This cartoon depicts how little protection these early umbrellas afforded. Cruikshank exaggerates the woman's size to demonstrate the point. Image @Art Tattler

Early umbrellas were heavy and cumbersome to use:

Early umbrellas were made of oiled silk with heavy wooden frames which made them difficult to open or close when wet. Whalebone (baleen) was also used but this still made the article heavy. It wasn’t until 1852 that Samuel Fox invented the steel ribbed umbrella claiming that he was using up stocks bought for making corsets. This made umbrellas much lighter and more portable. - Come rain or shine: historic umbrellas and parasols 

More on the topic:

• Umbrellas and their history, William Sangster 
• The history of umbrellas 
• Art Tattler 
• Metal Pattens: Awkward Protection for 18th and 19th Century Shoes

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The Jane Austen Signs of Middle Age

Jane Austen fans tend to read her books repeatedly throughout their lives.  In an article in the Guardian UK, Charlotte Higgins describes how her identity with a Jane Austen character changes with age. Here are some of her thoughts:

If you read Jane Austen more or less annually, as I have done since my late teens, you end up marking yourself against the characters. Oh reader, when I first read Pride and Prejudice I was Lydia’s age. I am about to become older than the delightful Mrs Croft in Persuasion. I still hang on to Anne Elliot, though. A tender 27 she may be, but in modern money I reckon you can give her another 10 years.

This is so true. I am starting to identify more with Mrs. Croft and Lady Russell than Anne Elliot. Charlotte Higgins goes on to say:

Persuasion is a very middle-aged novel, with its melancholic flavour and its acknowledgement that yes, you can make a grotesque mess of your life (the romance part I find much less satisfactory than the bleakly comic first three quarters of the book, essentially before one reaches Bath). It is true, however, that you can tell you are middle-aged when you start to empathise with P&P’s Mrs Bennet: with what Sir Walter Elliot would call “the rapid increase of the crow’s foot” comes a sense of sympathy with this character, written off as absurd in one’s heedless youth. At least she is trying to save her daughters from a future of poverty. And she’s certainly not getting any help from that husband of hers.

So true again. Only in recent years have I become impatient with Mr. Bennet and more sympathetic with his silly wife. I have also become more observant of Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility, of how hospitable she is, how she tries to become a matchmaker to all the unmarried ladies, and how her house is open to guest seemingly all the time. Yes, she is a silly and irritating woman, traits I could not stand when I was young (thus I could not appreciate her other than as a comic relief character), but now I rather like her positive qualities, as I do Mrs. Palmer’s. Elinor Dashwood is aware of Mrs. Palmer’s good nature and would tolerate her better if she weren’t such an unflaggingly cheerful airhead all the time.

Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer, Sense and Sensibility

As I get older I see that Lady Catherine de Bourgh is all bluster, and that her authority over Elizabeth Bennet is precisely zero. Young Lizzie is smart enough to know that, but as a 19 year-old reader, I was in awe of Lizzie’s stubborn attitude towards that lady when she stormed to Longbourn to demand Lizzie promise never to marry Mr. Darcy.

Mr. Bennet reading. Image from Jim and Ellen Moody

There are other ways that my attitude towards Jane Austen’s novels is changing. I notice how few happy marriages are portrayed. Right off the bat I can think of only the Crofts, the Gardiners, the John Knightleys, and the Musgroves. These days, I am more on the side of a pragmatic Charlotte Lucas, who has learned long ago not to look at the world through rose colored glasses, than Elizabeth, who waits for love. To be sure, she snagged her Mr. Darcy, but would Charlotte have had such an opportunity? I think not. I also see that Fanny Price’s strength of character and resolve in the face of so much bullying is a trait to admire; and that Mr. Bennet’s extensive library and unwillingness to compromise a cushy lifestyle were acquired at the expense of his family’s future financial security.

As the years roll by, my tastes and preferences for Jane’s novels are changing. Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice are running neck and neck in my favorite category. P&P used to have the field all to itself. While I loathed Mansfield Park the first time I read it, I don’t mind it so much now, and I find Emma less and less interesting and much too long . Perhaps I should lay the book aside for a few years.

Are your tastes and preferences changing towards Jane Austen’s books and characters as time goes on? How? Curious minds want to know.

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Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd: A Review

Consider this recipe for a modern Austenesque mystery: Take a familiar and beloved novel, Mansfield Park, with characters whose motives and actions we know intimately, and tear the book up. Throw the pages inside a bag, shake vigorously, and let the characters and plot fall where they may. Add a writer who has cooked up a complex plot for a delicious murder (or two or more, who knows?), and you have Murder at Mansfield Park, a truly hearty and satisfying new mystery novel.

Lynn Shepherd, the chef of this roman à clef, has by dint of her imagination turned  Jane Austen’s classic novel topsy turvy. The characters’ names are familiar, the setting is the same, some of the action as originally described by Jane Austen has been retained, and yet Ms. Shepherd has managed to create something new, refreshing and different.

I must admit to disliking mysteries in general, as many regular readers of my blog know. And I tend not to review Jane Austen sequels. But this novel is different. Oh, I was skeptical at first, slogging through the first chapter, trying to wrap my mind around the changes in the characters. And then I got caught up in the plot and became absorbed to the point where I could not put the book down.

Some red herrings are thrown into the mix, but not so many as to make the reader angry. The plot’s denouement was more than satisfactory and made logical sense. I suppose a true mystery fan might have guessed the killer sooner. Truth be told I held off guessing, for I wanted to be surprised, and so I was.

That Murder at Mansfield Park is Lynn Shepherd’s first novel is most surprising. Her writing style is lovely and effortless as she weaves several plot elements into a seamless whole. Rather than copy Jane Austen, Ms. Shepherd uses Mansfield Park as a take-off point. This novel is intelligently written and assumes that the reader has some command of the English language and enough background knowledge in history, Jane Austen, and other subtle historical and social references to understand the numerous references that crop up.

I give Murder at Mansfield Park six regency fans, my highest rating ever.

Post script: Gentle reader – If you are curious to learn more about Lynn’s novel after reading my review, be forewarned. Many reviewers have spoiled the plot by giving away too much of Lynn’s changes while gushing about them. Honestly, does no one take Review a Novel 101 any more? One irresponsible reviewer of a major online news publication even gave away who was murdered, ignoring the fact that half the fun of this mystery is guessing who the victim will be. So be careful, wary reader, of careless reviewers who do not even bother to place *Spoiler Alert* at the top of their reviews.

• Click here to read Lynn’s article for this blog: Regency Crime Scene Investigation
• View her YouTube video about her novel below:

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Pugalicious: The Pug in Mansfield Park and the 19th Century

…they are very affectionate and playful, and bear the confinement of the house better than many other breeds, racing over the carpets in their play as freely as others do over the turf. For this reason, as well as the sweetness of their skins, and their short and soft coats, they are much liked by the ladies as pets.-Chest of Books, Dog Breeding, The Pug

Gainsborough's painting of a pug sold for £993,250 at Sotheby's in 2009

Much has been made of Lady Bertram’s affection for her pug in Mansfield Park, and some have identified the dog as a symbol of imperialism, sexism and oppression. (Slipping the Leash: Lady Bertram’s Lapdog, Sally Palmer.) I see pug as a symbol of Lady Bertram’s wealth, indolence, and misplaced affection, for she cares much more for her dog’s minute-to-minute well-being than her childrens’. Towards the end of the novel, Lady Bertram showers more affection on Fanny Price than her disgraced daughter Maria, offering Fanny a puglet from Pug’s next litter.

William Hogarth, self-portrait with pug

Pugs are among the oldest breed of dogs. Their root can be traced to 400 BC China, where the dogs were bred to adorn the laps of Chinese sovereigns during the Shang dynasty.   By the 1300s there were three main types of dogs that are identifiable as founders of breeds of today: the Pekingese, the Japanese Spaniel, and the Pug.*  Small dogs presented as gifts arrived in Europe via the Dutch East India Company. In The Netherlands, the pug became the official dog of the House of Orange, and by 1688, William and Mary had  introduced the pug to England. Their popularity spread quickly  throughout the British Isles, and during this period the little dog may have been bred with the old type King Charles Spaniel.

Pug with clipped ears, J.A. Howe, 1850

The Victorians made dogs acceptable as pets in Britain and, as a result, they are largely responsible for the degree of genetic disorders in dogs today. They bred dogs to achieve a fashionable look or to emphasise a cute, childlike appearance as seen in the pug, the King Charles spaniel and other lapdogs. - A Potted Relationship of Dog and Man Through the Ages

Engraving, pair of 19th century pugs. Notice the clipped ears.

Reading Mansfield Park again, I came to realize that Jane Austen’s choice of a dog for Lady Bertram was a stroke of genius, for Pug is the canine reflection of herself. The tiny dog’s affectionate and inactive natures makes it the perfect house-bound dog. They are known for preferring human laps over engaging in outdoor exercise. Unless they are trained from puppyhood to be more independent, Pugs suffer from separation anxiety should their humans leave them for very long. Just recently, when I took my terrier to a dog park to exercise and play with his own kind, I saw a Pug contentedly sitting in his mistress’s lap, observing the commotion and rambunctious activity around him with a look that I can only describe as Pug-eyed horror. Though a young dog, he was not at all inclined to move. His mistress, a young woman, sighed, saying this was her first Pug and that she’d had not idea how very disinclined they were to do anything but sit, eat, and sleep. She did add that he was a perfect apartment pet.

George Selwyn and pug by Reynolds, 1766

Today’s Pug looks different from their 18th & 19th century counterparts, who were longer in leg and less wrinkled of face. Many had their ears clipped, a practice banned in England in 1895. Today’s Pug is stockier (tending to obesity in older age), needs a thorough cleaning of its facial folds to prevent infection,  and is prone to illnesses due to overbreeding. Nevertheless, this affectionate pet is still popular, gentle with children and considered an excellent little guard dog.

Dermot, a Westminster Dog Show Quality Pug

More on the Topic

• The 19th Century Dog Occupying High and Low and, Yes, Even Cruel Places
• Mansfield Park 2007: Another Perspective by Ellen Moody
• The Dummification of Mansfield Park
• A Potted Relationship of Dog and Man Through the Ages
• Pugnacious: Duchess of Devonshire’s Gossip Guide
• Factual Imaginings: Tuesday Trivia! Pugs!
• Georgian England’s Top Dogs
• Anecdotes of Dogs, by Edward Jesse, Esq, 1858, Project Gutenberg ebook
• Competition for a Gainsborough Pub

* The Pug FAQ

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Recycled Fashions in Emma 2009

IMDb has become an indispensable site for those of us who love movies. I especially love the trivia the site features about each film. Take Emma 2009, for example. Costumes that were recycled from other films are listed there. Let’s look at a few:

The purple coat Jodhi May (Mrs. Weston) wears on market day in Highbury is the same costume Hattie Morahan (Elinor Dashwood) wears when she arrives at Barton Cottage in “Sense & Sensibility” (2008).

Elinor in purple pelisse

The dark Spencer worn by Louise Dylan (Harriet Smith) to visit the poor is the same costume Lucy Scott wears in “Pride and Prejudice”(1995).

Harriet Smith (Louise Dylan) in dark spencer

The off-white dress with floral embroidery on the bodice worn by Christina Cole (Mrs. Elton) for her big entrance in church is the same costume worn by Cesca Martin in “The Regency House Party” (2004) during her “engagement,” and by Natasha Little (Becky Sharp) at Park Lane in “Vanity Fair” (1998).

Christina Cole as Mrs. Elton, Her Entrance in Church

The gray gown with gold bow print worn by Tamsin Greig (Miss Bates) to Miss Taylor’s wedding is the same costume worn by Anna Massey (Aunt Norris) in “Mansfield Park” (1983), Phyllida Law (Mrs. Bates) in Emma (1996), Lindsay Duncan (Mrs. Price) when Fanny leaves home in Mansfield Park (1999), Janine Duvitski (Mrs. Meagles) in “Little Dorrit” (2008), and Linda Bassett (Mrs. Jennings) in London in “Sense & Sensibility” (2008).

Miss Bates in gray pelisse and Emma in a floral gown

The floral print dress worn by Romola Garai (Emma) to Miss Taylor’s wedding is the same costume worn by Dagmara Dominczyk (Mercedès Iguanada) for Edmond’s homecoming at the beginning of The Count of Monte Cristo (2002).

Johdi May in lilac floral colored wrap dress

The lilac colored floral wrap dress Jodhi May (Anne Taylor/Weston) wears at Hartfield is the same costume worn by Denise Black (Mrs.Brocklebank) in “To the Ends of the Earth” (2005), and Alex Kingston (Mrs.Bennet) in “Lost in Austen” (2008).

Wearing a floral waistcoat at the Cole's party, Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley

The blue floral waistcoat Jonny Lee Miller (Mr.Knightley) wears at the Coles’ party is the same costume worn by Joseph Beattie (Henry Crawford) in Mansfield Park (2007) (TV).

Henry and Mary Crawford

For more recycled fashion comparisons, go to this link.

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