Jane from Dear Author tweeted about a tin of 22 temporary Jane Austen tattoos, so I went to take a look. They looked pretty darn awesome to me! I’m told the tattoos have sold out, so they’re currently in short supply. Bummer, huh?
Here’s a picture of the tattoos that come in the tin:
Jane Austen Tattoos
“Imprudent” is my favorite. I am tempted to get that word as a real tattoo.
Perhaps you’re wondering why that’s such an amateurish photo. Well, because I took it with my phone and I’m only willing to work so hard on this sort of thing. Perhaps you are also wondering, if the tattoos sold out, HOW did Carolyn get a picture of the back of one of the tins?
Both good questions.
Answer: I bought 5 of them. So I guess it’s at least partly my fault they’re in short supply.
About now you may be asking, What’s she gonna do with 5 tins of Jane Austen temporary tattoos! (Besides put “imprudent” in 5 risky places and then dance around gloating.)
ANOTHER good question.
I’m giving one of them away here. Yes, that’s right. One lucky Risky reader will get a tin of 22 Jane Austen temporary tattoos. Because I am awesome that way. I’m giving another away at my blog, and one at my facebook page. I’ll do another giveaway on twitter, too.
Rules and other Stuff You Should Know
Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 to enter. Winner selected at random from among qualified entrants. You have to enter before or at the deadline. No one related to me or employed by me is eligible to win. The deadline is 11:59:59 PM EST Monday December 2, 2013. (EST because that’s the time zone of this blog.) All prizes will be awarded.
How to Enter
In the comments to this post, complete the following question:
Jane Austen would approve of:
Like this: Jane Austen would approve of: grilled cheese sandwiches.
We looked at winter sports back in December 2020 and January 2021, and perhaps summer activities seem really obvious since when the sun shines and the days are warmer, what can’t be done outside? But some sports you might expect were not developed or popular until later than the Regency, and others you might not think of. So let’s take a look this month and next.
Boating during the Regency came in three forms based on the source of power. All three offered ways to get out on the water where it might be cooler on a hot summer day! In Sense & Sensibility Jane Austen uses the term “sailing” in reference to boating in general, not necessarily only with sails. Recreational boating was far more likely to involve rowing or punting, which were seldom done on rough waters and were considered to be under much more reliable control by their human operators than those relying on wind.
Sailing (with sails) purely for pleasure was still a little controversial during the Regency, because of safety concerns. For one thing, sailboat design still had a long way to go to reach the sort of safe and efficient crafts we have today. People were working on it, of course, and experimenting with such design is part of the hero’s interest in my old Signet Regency, The Rake’s Mistake. (Sorry, as mentioned last time, it’s out of print because I want to revise it and haven’t made time for that yet.).
However, recreational sailing in England dates all the way back to 1662, when King Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York, raced their huge new “yachts” from Greenwich to Gravesend and back. By the 18th century pleasure sailing was popular enough for the Cork Harbor Water Club to be established in Ireland, sometime prior to 1720, although they did not race, but “promenaded in formation” when they went out to rendezvous at Spithead. However, an open sailing match was held on the lower Thames in 1749, from Greenwich to the Nore and back. The prize was a silver cup presented by the eleven-year-old Prince of Wales, afterward King George III.
Documented Thames sailing matches in the London vicinity began in 1775 when HRM the Duke of Cumberland offered a silver cup (valued at 20 guineas) for a yachting race. It was sailed from Westminster Bridge to Putney Bridge and back. The next month the Duke of Newcastle sponsored another regatta, and the “Cumberland Fleet” was formed by those who sailed that summer—what would later become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The Cumberland Cup and other races were held most years from then on to at least 1812. Vauxhall Gardens also sponsored an annual race on the Thames from 1786 to 1810.
After 1812, the racing record stops, with a gap until some 20 years later. I believe the construction of new, more navigable bridges (Vauxhall, Waterloo, Southwark) complicated racing on the Thames during the building process and increased the river traffic afterward (which included steamboats) during those years. Significantly, between 1812 and 1815, forty-two of Britain’s most distinguished yachtsmen founded the Yacht Club (later to become the Royal Yacht Club) at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. They set a minimum size of ten tons for members’ vessels, and made the racing venue the Solent instead of the Thames.
Rowing, of course, is an ancient art. Think of Cleopatra’s barge! And note the rowers in the Vauxhall race picture above. I’m sure it was only natural that those who plied oars as their business might also indulge in competitions for pleasure and prizes, and others would see the potential for simple relaxation with oars as recreation.
One of the first documented Thames rowing races was held in 1715, to commemorate the anniversary of the accession of King George I. Thomas Dogget, a celebrated comedian, instituted the “coat and badge” as a prize to be rowed for annually on the river by six young watermen that had not been apprenticed longer than a year. In 1821 there was a similar boat race on the Serpentine during the coronation celebration for Prinny. By that time the river traffic and steamboats spelled an end to the rowing races on the Thames in town as well as those under sail.
The Boat Race is an annual set of rowing races between the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Oxford University Boat Club, traditionally rowed between open-weight eights on the upper River Thames from Putney to Mortlake. The men’s race was first held in 1829, quite late in the “extended Regency.” (The first women’s race was in 1927, almost a hundred years later.) The second men’s race was only held in 1836 due to disputes over the course and other matters.
The first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, 1829
The first Henley Regatta for rowers wasn’t held until March 1839. It later became the Henley Royal Regatta and was moved to July when the weather was more cooperative. Rowing continued to be a popular recreation throughout the 19th century, as this lovely painting below (circa 1872) by Ferdinand Heilbuth shows. Women rowing and punting seems to be more evident later in the century. By that time, the railroads had taken the burden of transportation off the Thames, allowing the river to be used once again for recreation.
Rich or poor, if you were in town you could go out on the River Thames, or you might opt to try the more tranquil waters of the man-made lake in Hyde Park, the Serpentine. The 40 acre lake was created in 1730 by order of Queen Caroline. The bridge crossing it (dividing the lower 25 acres from the narrower “Long Water” at Kensington Gardens) was redesigned and rebuilt in 1827. A lone rower is at the right of the picture below, but far more people are on shore than on the water. I recently learned that starting in the late 18th century there was a rescue station on the Serpentine for assisting those “in danger of drowning”! Rowboats can still be rented to use on the Serpentine today (along with paddle boats).
Most of the wealthy left London for the country when the warm summer days set in. If you were out of the city, you could choose the River Thames farther upstream from London, or any of the local streams, rivers, ponds or lakes. You might be so fortunate and wealthy as to have your very own man-made lake on your country estate, a fad that came into full swing after the royals built the Serpentine. In my old 1996 Signet Regency, An Unlikely Hero (ebook available from Penguin Random House), the hero and heroine are among a party who go punting on just such an estate lake. Punting is essentially “poling,” rather like the gondoliers of Venice, only using the characteristic flat shallow boats called punts. It is still a popular method of boating on English waterways that can be very quiet and relaxing!
Punting on the Thames –Marcus Stone 1863
Do you like to go out on the water? If so, which form of Regency boating would you have enjoyed if transported back in time?
Next time, we’ll look at some other favorite (land-based) warm weather Regency sports.
This past week, I witnessed an absolutely ridiculous attack on American writers (specifically) of Regency-set romances. A couple of English people declared that American writers as a whole simply didn’t know what they hell we were talking about and maybe we should visit England to gain a clue. What was their proof? Muffins. Americans keep putting MUFFINS in their books and no one in England has ever heard of a muffin, English or otherwise. These are not a thing. English people do not eat them. Never have. Never will.
When I responded that they were good enough for Jane Austen and Hannah Glasse, I got blocked.
English muffins, being cooked by me.
So, in case any of you need it, here is my Defense of Muffins in Georgian Fiction:
Firstly, here is the infamous Muffin Man himself, hawking his wears way back in the 1750s.
London Cries: A Muffin Man by Paul Sandby (c. 1759)
Oh, what is this? Is this the famous author Samuel Richardson writing of an Englishman eating muffins for breakfast? Clearly this cannot be…
The History of Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson, 1765
What do I spy with my little eye? Why it’s a record of the cries of the street vendors of London in 1777. What are they hawking? Muffins!
A Set of London Cries, 1777
Whatever can this be? Is it a political poem about Fox and Pitt involving toasted, buttered muffins? How un-English can you get!
A political ditty, 1803
Oh, look. Even that scallywag David Garrick is in on hoodwinking poor Americans into thinking muffins existed.
The Guardian by Garrick, 1805
The rhyme that you are all probably familiar with, recorded in a manuscript c. 1820.
Clearly one can not trust a book entirely devoted to the baking of bread! What rapscallion time travelled back and inserted an entire second on the anachronistic muffin?
A Treatise on the Art of Making Good and Wholesome Bread, 1821
How dare Maria Edgeworth write characters who love muffins! Surely this must be a mistranslation (from English into English!).
Maria Edgeworth, Early Lessons, 1825
I don’t know who this “Lady” is, but clearly she is not to be trusted as her domestic guide includes fake things like muffins. Muffins which no Englishman has ever heard of, let alone eaten.
The New London Cookery and Complete Domestic Guide, by A Lady, 1827
I am trying to determine when the English went off the muffin, leaving themselves with only the crumpet for comfort. Oscar Wilde features them in his work. So do P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy Sayers. In fact, they appear to have been Lord Peter’s favorite food.
One of MANY mentions of muffins in the Lord Peter Wimsey books.
My food history friends blame the depredations of WWII. Rationing has much to answer for when it comes to British cookery. Whatever the reason for the disappearance of muffins in the UK (at least according to Hawt Take UK Twitter), please rest assured that they were beloved and clearly being consumed at least up until WWII.
Today I’ll continue the dance series I began on July 6, with some notes about the cotillion and the quadrille, dances which were common in the early Regency and the late Regency, respectively. While there is a great deal of overlap in some characteristics of these dances, their prevalence in the ballroom does not seem to have overlapped much at all.
COTILLIONS
Jane Austen wrote to her niece Fanny in 1816, “Much obliged for the quadrilles, which I am grown to think pretty enough, though of course they are very inferior to the cotillions of my own day.” Jane was past her dancing prime by then and was referring to music sheets, but as so often happens even today, was not a fan of the “new” style of dancing that the younger people loved.
The Cotillion was a French country dance for four couples popular in England in the late 18th century. While it often began with a circling figure and included later small circles, most of the dance was performed in a square, with various “changes”, or figures that moved in and out of that main formation and allowed for changes of partners.
Because the cotillions came from France, many kept their French names.
The only dance Jane Austen ever mentions by name, “La Boulangerie” is a
cotillion. Here is a video so you can see what it was she so enjoyed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLUzvSXguQY
There were many various types of cotillion dances: “waltz cotillions” and “allemande cotillions” for instance. They included some figures also commonly found in English country dances and reels, and later the quadrilles, so there is a shared basis between the types of dances.
For instance, four of the basic quadrille segments are also found in cotillions: Les Pantalons, L’Eté, La Poule and La Pastorale. Many steps are also shared, but in style and music the dances are quite different. Quadrille enthusiasts denounced the cotillion as old-fashioned and “belonging with the ancient minuet.”
The word “cotillion” changed during the 19th century from referring to the specific type of dances to the more modern usage, referring instead to a dance event, even specifically to a dance event for debutantes. Just know that during the Regency era, that was not what it meant!
QUADRILLES
Captain Gronow wrote in his memoirs about the first appearance of the Quadrille at London’s elite social venue, Almack’s: “In 1814, the dances at Almack’s were Scotch reels and the old English country-dance; and the orchestra, being from Edinburgh, was conducted by the then celebrated Neil Gow. It was not until 1815 that Lady Jersey introduced from Paris the favourite quadrille, which has so long remained popular.”
The quadrille became a craze, so popular that it overtook all other forms of dance being done at this time, except for the waltz (topic for Part 3 of this series), introduced at about the same time. Cartoonists of the day, such as Gilroy and Cruikshank, could not be expected to resist ridiculing such a vibrant fad, especially as it required some skill and practice. “Accidents while dancing the Quadrille” was a popular caption.
Like the cotillion, this was a dance form with four couples
arranged in a square. Unlike the cotillion, it consisted of five sections or
movements, each with its own complicated sequence of figures and music, with
differing time signatures. Also unlike the cotillion, in the quadrille, the
couples took turns performing the steps, with the head couples leading and the
side couples resting until their turn. (Given the exertion required and the
length of the dances, this was no doubt a blessing!)
This video gives a good sense of the dance –watch as much as you wish, just know it lasts 11 minutes and 19 seconds! Paine’s First Set of Quadrilles (1815) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSD37PF2_Dw
I hope you are enjoying these dance notes and finding them helpful to visualize Regency dancing for your reading or writing pleasure! Part 3 on the Waltz will be posted on July 25.
Manners maketh man. William of Wykeham, Motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford
Company Shocked at a Lady Getting up to Ring the Bell, by James Gillray (1805)
By odd coincidence, both my actor son Graham and Elena’s daughter Gaile are in rehearsals for theater productions of Jane Austen works going up in March. Did someone declare March to be Jane Austen Theater month? Watching one of Graham’s rehearsals recently made me realize one of the greatest challenges these young actors face in trying to capture the historical flavor is bridging the gap between modern and period social graces.
I was asked to attend the rehearsal to share my so-called “expertise” with the cast members about titles, incomes, what constitutes a “gentleman” and who are and aren’t peers, etc. We had a good conversation about the characters in Pride & Prejudice, including things like why Darcy would be friends with Bingley, and why we should have more sympathy for Mrs. Bennett, comical as she is. But once the rehearsal began, I was vividly struck by how modern everyone was on stage, evidenced by the small matters of deportment, manners, and courtesy. I lump those together in the category of “social graces.” Does anyone learn those things anymore?
For example, the cast members needed coaching in how to stand and how to move. The girls needed to learn not to sit with their legs apart or crossed at the knees, and not to stand with a hip thrust out while talking. The young men needed to learn not to slouch, whether sitting or standing, and not to sit down when the women around them were still standing! At the end of the rehearsal, to her credit, their young director made them all practice walking with good, straight posture and a consciousness of how they placed their feet and made their steps. A few of the behavioral “faux pas” I saw seem to have been written into the script –perhaps not the best adaptation of Austen’s P&P out there.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, by Wm. Hoare
In past centuries, aristocratic children were taught the rules of society and polite behavior from an early age. Knowing when to show emotion, how to dress and move elegantly, the rules for when and how to make proper calls, behave at a ball, conduct graceful conversation and act courteously proclaimed them as members of upper society. In his famous series of letters to his illegitimate son on how to behave and succeed in society, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield wrote: “I would heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.” (Full text of 400 letters: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm Edited version of “best letters”: https://archive.org/details/bestlettersoflor00chesiala)
High Change in Bond Street, James Gillray (1796)
Failure to master these codes of conduct could mean failure to make a good marriage, failure to be successful in government service or failure in other opportunities both social and practical. Such failure betrayed a lack of “good breeding.” The young learned from parents, tutors and governesses, dance masters, and schools. Of course, that doesn’t mean when they were among their friends that they always toed the line. Most of us have heard of the highly rude behavior of young bucks loitering on Bond Street in Regency London.
In considering our Regency period, it makes sense to recognize that those who were then teaching had learned their social graces in the late 18th century, influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment era. One examiner of those ideas was the 3rd Earl of Shaftsbury, who wrote a series of essays on the subject in the early 1700s. He wrote: “Politeness’ may be defined as a dext’rous management of our words and actions, whereby we make other people have better opinion of us and themselves.” Even across the pond, such worthies as Ben Franklin and George Washington wrote guidelines for proper deportment and courtesy. (Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation by George Washington). A well-known but later resource was The Mirror of Graces (1811) by A Lady of Distinction.
Gaining entrée to this world of special social rules was the ambition of many middle class hopefuls as they gained in wealth but not status. This ambition helped to fuel the popularity of such periodicals as The Spectator, which regularly published advice on polite behavior. The unauthorized publication of the Earl of Chesterfield’s letters in 1774 was something of a scandal, not only for the breach of privacy, but also for exposing to the general public the information it contained. Samuel Johnson, who had a jaundiced view of Chesterfield anyway, claimed the letters “taught the morals of a courtesan and manners of a dancing master.” However, because they were never written for publication, they are all the more valuable for reflecting the reality of the social codes of the time, moral double standards and all.
I am old enough that I was sent to “dancing school” as an after school activity, where we were indoctrinated with many of the same rules of behavior and courtesy more than a hundred years later. Did anyone else here suffer through doing that? I think it was during 6th and 7th grade. We generally hated it, but we not only learned how to waltz and cha-cha, we learned how to go through a receiving line, how to properly be asked to dance and how to respond, and a million other small tidbits of polite social behavior –much of which is outdated now, quite reasonably.
Yet I wonder, in becoming so relaxed, informal (and egalitarian) in our modern age, in tossing out many of the old rules of behavior, have we lost something that mattered? Or have we simply “leveled the playing field” socially by removing barriers and distinctions that in the past helped to separate classes (and enforce inequality between sexes)? I would love to know what you think!
