My Cousin Jane

How exactly did entails work? Why were they so popular? What rites did Mr. Collins perform as a clergyman? Find out the answers to these questions and more, in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Show Notes

Note: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. This means that every time you click on one and then buy something, I get paid billions of pounds by a secret organization trying to bring back the Regency period…or I get a few fractions of a cent from a company like Amazon, one or the other.

Transcript

Note: Transcripts on this site are the scripts I used when preparing to record the show. They may or may not be a 100% faithful representation of the final recording. Audio clips of Pride & Prejudice come from Karen Savage’s narration of Pride & Prejudice, courtesy of LibriVox.org.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane, a podcast about Jane Austen and her works. With your host, Lee Falin.

Welcome back to another episode of My Cousin Jane. Each week, we look at what you might think of as the behind the scenes featurettes or deleted scenes of a particular chapter in Austen’s books.

This week, we’re going to talk about Pride & Prejudice Chapter 13.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 13 introduces us to Mr. Collins. He’s the cousin of the Longbourn sisters, and is next inline to inherit the estate once Mr. Bennet dies. This fact doesn’t win him any points in Mrs. Bennet’s eyes.

Entails and Inheritance

Before Mr. Collins arrives, he writes a letter informing the family that he has invited himself over for a visit. Let’s listen to a brief clip from that letter, and as always our audio clips come courtesy of Karen Savage and Librivox.org:

“About a month ago I received this letter, and about a fortnight ago I answered it; for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins, who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases.”

“Oh, my dear,” cried his wife, “I cannot bear to hear that mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure, if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.”

Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before: but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason; and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 13

Well, in case Mrs. Bennet is listening, we’re going to take a few minutes to explain the nature of an entail, and a bit about regency estate law.

But first, I just have to point out this little quip by Mr. Bennet. Pretty much everything Mr. Bennet says in the novel is a mixture of dry humor and sarcasm, and while Elizabeth often gets the spotlight for being the voice of Jane Austen’s “witty social commentary”, Mr. Bennet has his fair share of quips as well.

A great example in this chapter is his comment that he felt that this letter of Mr. Collins was a matter of some delicacy and required “early attention”. But he also says that he received the letter a month ago, didn’t answer it until two weeks after he received it, and then two weeks after that , he brings it up to the rest of the family.

So now, on to the infamous entail.

In the early days of the English aristocracy, the right of primogeniture was fairly well established. This was the right of the first born son to inherit his father’s estate, rather than having that estate divided amongst all the children.

There are a bunch of reasons why this happened, but one of the main reasons for its beginnings was social influence and security. Adam Smith writes about this in the classic economics text, The Wealth of Nations:

When land was considered as the means, not of subsistence merely, but of power and protection, it was thought better that it should descend undivided to one. In those disorderly times, every great landlord was a sort of petty prince. His tenants were his subjects. He was their judge, and in some respects their legislator in peace and their leader in war. He made war according to his own discretion, frequently against his neighbours, and sometimes against his sovereign. The security of a landed estate, therefore, the protection which its owner could afford to those who dwelt on it, depended upon its greatness. To divide it was to ruin it, and to expose every part of it to be oppressed and swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

So primogeniture had two main goals. First, to make sure a family’s land remained intact, by not dividing it amongst all the children. And second, to keep the land tied to the family’s name by making sure only the oldest son inherited. Because if a daughter inherited the estate and then married, that estate would then pass to a new family line.

But primogeniture is only half of the story here. Because that right alone did not stop the heir from parcelling up the land to sell it off as he pleased.

So in addition to the right of primogeniture, there were also Entail restrictions.

The English law governing how entails worked was codified in a 1285 statute called De donis conditionalibus, which sounds a bit like a Harry Potter spell.

There were basically two ways to inherit land in English law: “Fee simple” and “fee tail”. First, the term “fee” is a latin derivative of the word “fief”, which just means “estate of land”. You can think of “fee simple” as “the land is simply yours to do what you want”, whereas “fee tail” inheritance says you can’t sell the estate to anyone except your rightful heir (often referred to as the “tenant in tail”).

The rules around this restriction are complicated and vary somewhat over the years, so sometimes different estates would have slightly differing rules about how they could be inherited, how that chain of custody could be altered, and how long the entail lasted.

Typically, because of rules against perpetuities — that is, putting a permeant restriction on land, an entail lasted until 21 years after the death of those creating the entail.

However, families with particular pride often worked around this restriction by renewing entails in each generation. But, this had to be done with both the current owner’s and heir’s consent. While that might seem difficult to pull off, it was actually relatively easy.

Imagine you’re the heir of a large estate. You’ve been brought up all your life as the chosen one set to inherit everything. And maybe because of that, you’ve never been to fussed about financial prudence.

One day your father calls you into his study and says, “Son, I don’t want you selling off our family’s ancestral land to just anyone.”

“Of course I won’t father. You know me…Mr. Family pride…”

Your father narrows his eyes at you, perhaps thinking of our outstanding gambling debts and the wonton way that you spend money when you visit London.

He smiles. “Of course son, of course. But just to give you an extra incentive, I want you to sign this legally binding entail that will prohibit you from selling the land to anyone except your heir.”

Now, this goes against your plans for financial freedom and “being your own man”, so you hesitate a little.

Your father smiles again and says, “Son, I can see this is difficult for you. So in exchange for signing this document, I will sign one of my own that guarantees you an annual living allowance until I leave this earth. Now, if you don’t want either of us to sign these things, well…” he shrugs as if to say, “good luck finding the funds to pay for your extravagant lifestyle.

You look at your father, who is in relatively good health, and will likely live at least another ten or twenty years. Sighing, you sign the papers. Now the land is entailed until 21 years after you die.

Unless you decide to have a similar conversation with your heir one day.

Most legal scholars agree that the 1925 Law of Property Act ended the ability of estates to be entailed, though some maintain that certain restrictive aspects of the entail still exist in the form of things like conservation easements, rights of first refusal, and deed covenants, all of which serve the purpose of allowing a former land owner to set the terms by which land may be used by successive owners.

Patronage

Let’s talk briefly about Mr. Collins’ relationship with Lady Catherine:

I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her Ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 13

Last season we discussed how in regency times, the term “patron” in had three common meanings.

It could mean a patron of the arts, someone who paid to support one or more artists in their work. The term could also refer to someone who donated money or resources to a charitable cause.

But here the term patron refers to patronage in the church, which was the right a wealthy landholder had to appoint a living to a clergyman.

The assignment a clergyman had was referred to as a “living”, and it could produce varying amounts of income, depending on its size, management, and the composition of parishioners who lived within its boundaries.

We’ll talk more about the economics of a living when we discuss Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, where their details are more integral to the plots of those books.

Rites

In the tail end of the earlier quote, Mr. Collins mentions that he is ready to “perform those rites and ceremonies” of the Church of England, which Elizabeth refers to here:

…Elizabeth was chiefly struck with his extraordinary deference for Lady Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying his parishioners whenever it were required.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 13

These list of “rites” of the Church of England are sometimes referred to as “Rites of Passage” because they mark important transition periods in a person’s life, such as birth, baptism, marriage, and death as they pass along their mortal journey on their path to return to the presence of God.

According to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which was published in 1571 as the foundational set of doctrines for the Church of England, these rites can be divided into two groups, the set of rites or sacraments instituted by Christ (sometimes called “Sacraments of the Gospel”), and those later adopted or taught by the apostles (sometimes called “Sacraments of the Church”).

The Sacraments of the Gospel include Baptism and Communion (also called the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist). The Sacraments of the Church include confirmation, penance, ordination, marriage, and extreme unction. This latter rite is sometimes referred to as “ministering to the sick” or “anointing the sick”.

Since this is often performed just prior to someone’s death, it is sometimes referred to as “last rites”, though most clergy disapprove of this term because the rite of Extreme Unction is available to anyone who is dangerously ill, not just those who are terminally ill. And therefore someone may receive Extreme Unction more than once during the lifetime.

Before I get a bunch of angry letters accusing me of misconstruing Anglican doctrines, it’s important to note that the beliefs and practices of the Church of England during the regency era are not necessarily exactly the same in all regards as those practiced by its members today.

Nor do all churches that form the Anglican Communion have the exact same interpretation of the 39 articles.

As with all religions, if you want a good overview of the beliefs of the Church of England, or any other Anglican Church, I suggest you reach out to a practicing member.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you would like to help support the My Cousin Jane podcast, please head over to mycousinjane.com and sign up for our newsletter, or click on the little donate button.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Thanks for listening.

Behind the Scenes / Q&A Episode – Pride & Prejudice Chapter 12

How do I carry out Regency Research? What got me interested in Jane Austen in the first place, and how is this show produced? Find out the answers to these questions and more, in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Audio

Show Notes

Note: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. This means that every time you click on one and then buy something, I get paid billions of pounds by a secret organization trying to bring back the Regency period…or I get a few fractions of a cent from a company like Amazon, one or the other.

Transcript

Note: Transcripts on this site are the scripts I used when preparing to record the show. They may or may not be a 100% faithful representation of the final recording. Audio clips of Pride & Prejudice come from Karen Savage’s narration of Pride & Prejudice, courtesy of LibriVox.org.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane, a podcast about Jane Austen and her works. With your host, Lee Falin. Season 2 – episode 12

Welcome back to another episode of My Cousin Jane. Normally we’d spend this episode talking about Pride & Prejudice chapter 12. But this chapter is super short at just over 670 words or so, and not that much happens.

Jane is on the mend. And Elizabeth, anxious to leave Netherfield, convinces Jane to borrow Mr. Bingley’s carriage, and they leave right after church on Sunday to return home.

And that’s basically it for Chapter 12.

We could talk a bit about Regency church services, but I’m saving those discussions for our Mr. Collins chapters. So instead, I thought we’d make this episode a little more interactive and go over some reader questions and comments.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to see it continue, please consider supporting us by going to MyCousinJane.com, signing up for our newsletter, or clicking on the little donate button.

Question 1

I’ve gotten a couple of variations on this first question:

How do you approach research for these episodes? Do you just know a bunch of stuff about Regency times? What sources do you use?

First of all, though I love British history I did not study much about it in school. I have a PhD in quantitative genetics, and while that program and subsequent activities didn’t teach me much of anything about British history, it did teach me a lot about how to do research effectively, and how to corroborate information from reliable sources.

One of the things you’ll find as you start to research Regency lore, is that false information spreads pretty quickly, and often without any sources attributed to it.

Even fairly well known Regency writers will fall into this trap, so I try not to take anything at face value, even if it’s something published in a popular novel or research text.

While I find interesting information in all kinds of places, I don’t usually include it in the show unless I can verify the information with what I call my “Primary Regency Sources”.

These sources includes anything written by Austen herself, (including her novels and surviving letters). Things written about Austen by her immediate family members (or extended family and friends who knew her during her lifetime), and the original books, newspaper articles, maps, and periodicals published during the regency era, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary’s historical word usage and meaning reference.

This last one is particularly important because sometimes a word’s meaning will change significantly over the centuries.

There are a lot of secondary sources I really like as well. These include the publications of the Jane Austen Society of North America; the writings of historic site curators, such as the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, and the Jane Austen center in Bath; and articles published in peer-reviewed research journals, usually on period-specific topics rather than on “the regency era” per se.

Now, there are lots of other great resources out there for learning more about Jane Austen and Regency life in general, and I try my best to mention those specifically on the show when I come across them. Sites like the BBC and Jane Austen’s World, and countless books I’ve mentioned over the years.

But, I try to never take any information about the Regency era at face value (and therefore never include it in an episode), unless I can corroborate it with a primary source.

That’s not to say that I don’t get stuff wrong, or won’t get stuff wrong in the future. One interesting thing about history is that a specific fact or conclusion can be presumed true for quite a long time, and then a new discovery of an old letter or text can change everything we thought we knew about subject.

So if you think I’ve got something on the show wrong (and can prove it to me by citing a primary source from the time period), please let me know.

Question 2

The second most common question I get is related to the first.

How do you plan and record each episode?

Typically what I’ll do is scan through the current episode’s chapter, looking for historical bits that I think listeners might find interesting, or which would clarify or add extra depth to the novel.

As I mentioned, I didn’t study British history in school, but at this point I have read a lot of information about Jane Austen and the regency era in general, so I can usually spot when something is going to be interesting.

But sometimes I’ll come across something I’ve glossed over a bunch of times and wonder what its significance is. That will usually send me down a rabbit hole of research.

A good example of this is the discussion way back in episode 5 of season 1, when I talked about Sir Walter’s description of Mrs. Clay as having “a clumsy wrist”.

At first this seems like a throw-away comment by a vain man, but digging a little deeper we learn that during that time period, rickets was a large problem during that time period for the lower class due to malnutrition, and that one of the symptoms was skeletal deformity in the wrist.

So once I learned all this, I knew it was something I wanted to include in the show.

Sometimes I’ll read something interesting and it’ll just stick with me, and I’ll make a note about it to include it in a particular episode. This is particularly true with Austen’s family life, where you find out so much about Austen’s understanding of the Navy came from her brother’s service, or her understanding of the clergy came from the fact that her father was a clergyman.

But once I have a general outline of the facts I want to discuss, and I’ve verified things using the primary sources I discussed previously, I write out a draft script for the episode.

Then I prepare the audio for the clips I want to use. I’ve mentioned in probably every episode that I get those from Karen Savage’s performances on Librivox.org.

On the more technical side of things, I use a few tools from Rogue Amoeba to do the prep work and recording. These include Fission for audio editing, Audio Hijack for recording, and Farrago for queuing up audio clips and the intro and outro clips.

Once the raw recording is done, I clean things up in Final Cut Pro, which is normally something I use for video editing, but its magnetic timelines and audio scrubbing tools make it really great for editing podcasts as well.

Once that’s done, I upload a reasonable transcript to the blog at MyCousinJane.com, and then post the episode on Buzzsprout, our podcast host. They then take care of syndicating it to various catalogues, like Spotify and Apple Music.

Each episode probably takes me 5 to 10 hours to research, write, record, and edit.

On the hardware side, the only recording hardware I have is a Blue snowball mic, though I would love to upgrade to a Yeti mic, or an Elegato Wave, and maybe pick up a Stream Deck, but those are down the road purchases.

Question 3

Our final question today is:

How did you first get interested in Jane Austen and the Regency Era?

When I was going to graduate school, I had a pretty long commute, about an hour each way several times a week, and I was always on the lookout for new audiobooks that would make this drive less monotonous.

While I had an Audible subscription, I would listen to books faster than my Audible credits could keep up with, and then I discovered Librivox. Librivox is a fantastic service, and their volunteers provide public domain audio recordings of public domain books.

One thing you’ll notice pretty quickly is that there is a wide variety of narration quality. Many of the more popular titles have several different audio versions, all by different narrators.

Well, I started listening to a book narrated by Karen Savage, I think it was Anne of Green Gables. Then when I’d finished that, I looked for other titles she’d narrated and started listening to Pride & Prejudice.

Something about those books really helped me to deal with the stresses of being a young father working full time while also going to grad school.

I think Winston Churchill said it best when he talks about his own experience having Pride & Prejudice read to him while he was recovering from pneumonia:

The days passed in much discomfort. Fever flickered in and out. The doctors tried to keep the work away from my bedside…They all kept on saying, “Don’t work, don’t worry,” to such an extent that I decided to read a novel.

I had long ago read Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and now I thought I would have Pride and Prejudice. Sarah read it to me beautifully from the foot of the bed…What calm lives they had, those people! No worries about the French Revolution, or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic Wars. Only manners controlling natural passion so far as they could, together with cultured explanations of any mischances.

Winston Churchill

Conclusion

That wraps up episode 11 of season 2 of My Cousin Jane.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help us out, please consider supporting us by heading over to MyCousinJane.com and clicking on the little donate button.

Either way, thanks so much for listening.

White soup and Turns about the Room

How exactly does one make a white soup for a Regency Ball? What’s negus and why was it added to soup? Did one drink it, or eat it, or both? Find out the answers to these questions and more, in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Audio

Show Notes

Note: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. This means that every time you click on one and then buy something, I get paid billions of pounds by a secret organization trying to bring back the Regency period…or I get a few fractions of a cent from a company like Amazon, one or the other.

Books referenced in this episode

Transcript

Note: Transcripts on this site are the scripts I used when preparing to record the show. They may or may not be a 100% faithful representation of the final recording. Audio clips of Pride & Prejudice come from Karen Savage’s narration of Pride & Prejudice, courtesy of LibriVox.org.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane, a podcast about Jane Austen and her works. With your host, Lee Falin. Season 2 – episode 11.

Welcome back to another episode of My Cousin Jane. Each week, we look at what you might think of as the behind the scenes featurettes or deleted scenes of a particular chapter in Austen’s books.

This week, we’re going to talk about Pride & Prejudice Chapter 11.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to see it continue, please consider supporting us by going to MyCousinJane.com, signing up for our newsletter, or clicking on the little donate button.

Chapter Summary

In chapter 11 Jane is feeling well enough to join Elizabeth and the Netherfield gang in the drawing room. After making sure Jane is warm enough, they start discussing Charles’ idea of having a ball at Netherfield, and the rest of the evening is spent in a playful banter. Playful at least on Elizabeth’s part.

White Soup

Let’s jump in to this banter at the point where Caroline asks her brother about the ball. And as always, our audio clips come courtesy of Karen Savage and Librivox.org:

“By the bye Charles, are you really serious in meditating a dance at Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on it, to consult the wishes of the present party; I am much mistaken if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a pleasure.”

“If you mean Darcy,” cried her brother, “he may go to bed, if he chooses, before it begins; but as for the ball, it is quite a settled thing, and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough I shall send round my cards.”

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 11

There are a lot of interesting things to discuss about Regency balls. We talked about some of them in previous episodes, and we’ll talk about a bunch more in the future. But today I want to talk about white soup.

If you search for white soup recipes, you’ll find a lot of “Regency inspired” white soup recipes. One thing you’ll notice about them is that they are all quite different.

That’s because even during the Regency era, there were a lot of ways to make white soup. There were really fancy versions made by the aristocracy (or rather, by their servants), as well as many versions of what we might think of as “more economic” white soup.

If you ask someone why “white soup” is called “white”, you’ll hear a lot of different explanations. Some people claim that it was always made without red meat, but this wasn’t even true in Regency times. Others claim that it’s because of the ground almonds, or cream, or some other ingredient.

The fact is that it’s impossible to say definitively, because you can easily find variations on this recipe that go back to the early 1600s, and many historians believe the recipe originates in the Middle Ages.

There’s also some disagreement about how white soup was usually served at Regency balls. Some writers portray it as a traditional soup, which you would sit down at a table and eat from a bowl. While others convey the impression that it was served more like a warm punch.

The only thing that can be said conclusively about white soup is that it usually “looked white” and could be made lots of different ways.

If you want to know the kind of white soup Jane Austen ate at home, you can grab a copy of Martha Lloyd’s Household Book, a collection of handwritten recipes and medicinal remedies from Jane Austen’s friend / housekeeper, Martha Lloyd.

Finding themselves very firmly in the more “economic” side of society, the white soup prepared by the Austen family was relatively simple:

Make a gravy of any kind of meat, add to it the yolks of four eggs boiled hard and pounded very fine, 2 oz. of sweet almonds pounded, as much cream as will make it a good colour.

Martha Lloyd’s Household Book

But for a more refined recipe, we can turn to the most popular cookbook of the early 19th century, A New System of Domestic Cookery by Maria Rundell. Though this book was first published in 1806, its recipes were in wide use before that time.

Take a scrag of mutton, a knuckle of veal, after cutting off as much meat as will make collops, two or three shank bones of mutton nicely cleaned and a quarter of a pound of very fine undrest lean gammon of bacon: with a bunch of sweet herbs, a piece of lemon-peel, two or three onions, three blades of mace and a desert spoonful of white pepper; boil all in three quarts of water till the meat falls quite to pieces. Next day take off the fat, clear the jelly from the sediment, and put it in a saucepan of the nicest tin. If macaroni is used it should be added soon enough to get perfectly tender, after soaking in cold water. Vermicelli may be added after the thickening, as it requires less time to do.

Have ready the thickening which is to be made as follows: Blanch a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and beat them to a paste in a marble mortar, with a spoonful of water to prevent their oiling; mince a large slice of drest veal or chicken and beat it with a piece of stale white bread; add all this to a pint of thick cream, a bit of fresh lemon-peel and a blade of mace, in the finest powder. Boil it a few minutes; add to it a pint of soup, and strain and pulp it through a coarse sieve; this thickening is then fit for putting it to the rest, which should boil for an hour afterwards.

A New System of Domestic Cookery by Maria Rundell

So, clearly the second version is much more involved. Not only does it require more expensive ingredients, (such as veal or mutton rather than “any meat”, more expensive spices, and almonds), the recipe is also much more labor intensive, and requires at least two days to make up a batch.

The funny thing about serving white soup at balls in Regency times was that most people probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between soup made with a fancy recipe compared with a more economical one, because white soup at balls was almost always spiked with negus.

Negus is a type of mulled win, a mixture of port wine, citrus, sugar, and sometimes spices such as nutmeg. The main difference between Regency negus and modern mulled wine is negus was mixed with hot water.

Negus has a very interesting history, and became very popular in the early 1700s. It’s mentioned in the works of a variety of Regency and Victorian writers, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, William Thackeray, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This definitely gives more weight to the “served as a warm punch” interpretation, especially when you consider Fanny Price’s reflections at the end of her first ball in Mansfield Park:

creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.

Mansfield Park, Chapter 28

Turn about the room

Speaking of rooms and dancing, here’s one more interesting clip from chapter 11:

Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards got up and walked about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked well; but Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly studious. In the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one effort more; and, turning to Elizabeth, said,—

“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.”

Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Bingley succeeded no less in the real object of her civility: Mr. Darcy looked up.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 11

The phrase “take a turn about the room” is such an interesting phrase and it’s a phrase that is so often quoted by people familiar with Pride & Prejudice, that I wondered where it first originated.

The earliest use of it I could find in English was in 1687, in a pamphlet by Roger L’Estrange, whom you might know as the man who first translated Aesops fables into English, though he had a rather interesting political career prior to that, and translated many other important classical texts.

But according to Google’s Ngram graphs of the English language, while you do see the phrase appear in a few places in the 1700 and 1800s, the phrase wasn’t really that popular in English writing until around the year 2005, when its usage rockets up exponentially.

I can only assume this is due to the use of this line in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Conclusion

That wraps up episode 11 of season 2 of My Cousin Jane.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help us out, please consider supporting us by heading over to MyCousinJane.com and clicking on the little donate button.

Either way, thanks so much for listening.

Playing Piquet and Mending Pens

Is Piquet more fun than Loo? Did Mr. Darcy really mend his own pens? Why did he need to and how did he do it? Find out the answers to these questions and more, in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Audio

Show Notes

Note: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. This means that every time you click on one and then buy something, I get paid billions of pounds by a secret organization trying to bring back the Regency period…or I get a few fractions of a cent from a company like Amazon, one or the other.

Books referenced in this episode

Transcript

Note: Transcripts on this site are the scripts I used when preparing to record the show. They may or may not be a 100% faithful representation of the final recording. Audio clips of Pride & Prejudice come from Karen Savage’s narration of Pride & Prejudice, courtesy of LibriVox.org.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane, a podcast about Jane Austen and her works. With your host, Lee Falin. Season 2 – episode 10.

Welcome back to another episode of My Cousin Jane. Each week, we look at what you might think of as the behind the scenes featurettes or deleted scenes of a particular chapter in Austen’s books.

This week, we’re going to talk about Pride & Prejudice Chapter 10.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to see it continue, please consider supporting us by going to MyCousinJane.com, signing up for our newsletter, or clicking on the little donate button.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 10 is one of my favorite chapters in Pride & Prejudice.

The banter between Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, as well as the attempts on Caroline Bingley’s part to simultaneously disparage Elizabeth and use her to get Mr. Darcy’s attention, are all great examples of Jane Austen’s ability to use smart dialogue and social wit to tell an entertaining story.

Piquet

This week we have yet another Regency card game introduced to us. Let’s listen to this clip courtesy of Karen Savage and Librivox.org:

Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room. The loo table, however, did not appear. Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching the progress of his letter, and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.

Price & Prejudice, Chapter 10

We’ve talked about commerce, Vingt-un, and loo, and this week we find our Netherfield friends playing piquet, which is a two-player trick-taking game.

If you don’t remember how trick-taking games work, go back and review episode 09 of this season, where we talk about the rules of the game of Loo.

Piquet is one of those games that seems really complicated at first, but once you start playing it, it seems really simple. But then once you understand what’s happening, you realize there’s more to it than you thought.

If you want the complete rules to this and many other fascinating historical games, I recommend you check out John McLeod’s popular historical card game reference site, pagat.com, but here’s a quick summary:

You start with a deck of 32 cards containing only the cards 7 through Ace. Each player is dealt twelve cards, which leaves eight in a draw pile.

Players take turns each round as the “Elder” and “Younger” hands. Each round has three phases: exchange, declaration, and trick taking. The elder hand goes first in each phase.

In the exchange phase, the elder hand can exchange up to five cards with the draw pile while the younger can exchange up to three.

In the second, or declaration phase, the elder hand “declares” their best plays in three different categories.

After each declaration, which is done without revealing any cards, the younger hand announces whether they can beat that play or not.

The younger hand then declares their best plays for any category where they announced a better play than the elder hand.

Points are then awarded according to how good each player’s declarations were.

After all the declarations are made, the elder hand leads the trick-taking phase of the round.

What makes piquet so interesting is that even though you never see your opponent’s cards until the trick taking round begins, if you’re paying close attention to what is declared during the declaration phase, you can almost always figure out what cards they have, which allows you to plan your strategy for the trick-taking portion.

It’s a fun game with a few different variations. I recommend you find a copy of the rules and play through it a couple of times with a friend. You can also find digital versions of the game online.

The game is also referred to as Le Cent, and appears under that name in the classic French story, Gargantua and Pantagruel, which we discussed back in Episode 06.

Mending Pens & Dancing Reels

Now, in case card games aren’t your thing, let’s turn our attention to letter writing, and Miss Caroline Bingley’s observations on what a great letter writer Mr. Darcy seems to be:

“You write uncommonly fast.”

“You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”

“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!”

“It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.”

“Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”

“I have already told her so once, by your desire.”

“I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well.”

“Thank you—but I always mend my own.”

“How can you contrive to write so even?”

He was silent.

“Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley’s.”

“Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them justice.”

“Oh, it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”

“They are generally long; but whether always charming, it is not for me to determine.”

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 10

I just want to take a moment to discuss the idea of mending pens. According to an article written for the Jane Austen Society of North America by Robert Hurford, editor of Editor of Journal for the International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting, mending pens was something that most people preferred to do themselves, though there was difference between mending pens and cutting them into their initial shape.

Most people during the Regency era wrote with either a feature quill, or a graphite pencil. In this scene, Darcy would have been writing with a feather quill and ink.

Turning a feather into a quill was a relatively specialized task, and most people did not do this themselves. But, mending a pen—the feature quill equivalent of sharpening your pencil—was something that most people did prefer to do themselves. But before we talk about how to do it, let’s talk about why it was needed

There were two main kinds of ink in use during that time period, carbon black (made from mixing soot or lamp black with either gum or glue), and iron gall ink (made from soaking gall nuts from an oak tree in water, and then mixing in an iron salt). Both inks were typically sold in powdered form, and you would add water to them before use.

Since this ink is relatively wet, it would cause the tip of the quill to soften and deform as it was used. Most of the time, writers would have three or four quills at hand, and when one became too wet to use, they would switch to another until the wet one dried out.

You could make your tips last a little longer by writing on a softer surface, which is why many regency era writing desks, and the letter writing boxes that were placed on top of writing desks, had soft felt tops.

But mending a pen was relatively straight forward. Most people used a small knife, cleverly referred to as a “pen” knife, to sharpen and reshape the tip of the quill. Though again, you had to wait until the quill was dry before you could mend it.

One last note on this scene: most people during this time period learned to write using English Round Hand style, so we can assume that this is the style of writing Mr. Darcy was using.

If you want to explore the topic of regency handwriting in more detail, I recommend getting a copy of Barbara Heller’s special edition of Pride & Prejudice. Heller used the science of paleography—the study of historic handwriting, to recreate plausible handwriting styles for each of the letters in the novel based on the writer’s personalities and background.

Heller based much of her research on the study of Austen’s handwriting, as well as conversations with expert calligraphers.

Heller’s special edition of Pride & Prejudice includes nineteen hand folded letters with appropriate postmarks, which have been inserted into “pouches placed at just the right moments in the story.”

You can find a link to the book in our show notes on MyCousinJane.com.

Conclusion

That wraps up episode 10 of season 2 of My Cousin Jane.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help us out, please consider supporting us by heading over to MyCousinJane.com and clicking on the little donate button.

Either way, thanks so much for listening.

Embarrassing boasts and the Game of Loo

Why is poetry the food of love? What’s so funny about four-and-twenty families? And how do you play Loo? Find out the answers to these questions and more, in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Audio

Show Notes

Note: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. This means that every time you click on one and then buy something, I get paid billions of pounds by a secret organization trying to bring back the Regency period…or I get a few fractions of a cent from a company like Amazon, one or the other.

Books referenced in this episode

Transcript

Note: Transcripts on this site are the scripts I used when preparing to record the show. They may or may not be a 100% faithful representation of the final recording. Audio clips of Pride & Prejudice come from Karen Savage’s narration of Pride & Prejudice, courtesy of LibriVox.org.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane, a podcast about Jane Austen and her works. With your host, Lee Falin. Season 2 – episode 9.

Welcome back to another episode of My Cousin Jane. Each week, we look at what you might think of as the behind the scenes featurettes or deleted scenes of a particular chapter in Austen’s books.

This week, we’re going to talk about Pride & Prejudice Chapter 9.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to see it continue, please consider supporting us by going to MyCousinJane.com, signing up for our newsletter, or clicking on the little donate button.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 9 is a relatively short, but very cringeworthy chapter. Not because the writing is bad, but because it is such an accurate portrayal of a very awkward situation.

Elizabeth’s mother and younger sisters come to visit Netherfield to check on Jane. The conversation is more than a bit awkward for Elizabeth, who afterwards quickly retreats to check on Jane.

Dining

Let’s start with an excerpt from the chapter that includes a discussion of social dining in the country, courtesy of Karen Savage and Librivox.org:

“Indeed, Mama, you are mistaken,” said Elizabeth, blushing for her mother. “You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that there was not such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in town, which you must acknowledge to be true.”

“Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there are few neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with four-and-twenty families.”

Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep his countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her eye towards Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth, for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother’s thoughts, now asked her if Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn since her coming away.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 9

The joke here is that four-and-twenty families, though a significant number to Mrs. Bennet, is in fact a rather embarrassing boast compared to what families in the highest social circles such as Darcy and the Bingleys are used to.

The Food of Love

Speaking of embarrassing boasts, here’s one about Jane:

“She seems a very pleasant young woman,” said Bingley.

“Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas herself has often said so, and envied me Jane’s beauty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane—one does not often see anybody better looking. It is what everybody says. I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a gentleman at my brother Gardiner’s in town so much in love with her, that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.”

“And so ended his affection,” said Elizabeth impatiently. “There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”

“I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,” said Darcy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”

Price & Prejudice, Chapter 9

Darcy’s comment that “poetry is the food of love” is a reference to a famous Shakespeare quote from Twelfth Night:

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 1

Loo

As promised in the previous episode, we’re going to backtrack briefly one chapter and talk about the game of Loo. Here’s a clip from chapter 8 where Elizabeth encounters the game at Netherfield:

On entering the drawing-room she found the whole party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting them to be playing high she declined it, and making her sister the excuse, said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment.

Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 8

I mentioned last time that according to David Parlett, author of A History of Card Games, Loo, also known as “Lanterloo”, is a trick-taking game similar to whist, which most scholars think originated in Holland.

While it was mostly played by the aristocracy in the late 1700s and early 1800s, by the late 1800s it was considered a hallmark of the rough tavern crowd and generally looked down upon.

Trick-Taking

Loo is a trick-tacking game. If you’ve never played a trick-taking game, most of them go something like this:

Whomever goes first plays a card, say the four of clubs. The next player has to “follow suit” by playing another club if they have one. If they don’t have one they can either play a trump card or a slough card.

A trump card is a card of a designated suit that beats all the other suits.

For example, if hearts are the trump suit, and the current high card in the trick is the ten of clubs, a player that doesn’t have clubs could play any heart card, which would be the new high card of the trick.

If a trump card is played, the only way for the next player to do better would be to play a higher card in the trump.

So imagine we have four players named Elizabeth, Jane, Bingley, and Darcy, and we say that hearts is the trump suit. Elizabeth goes first and plays a five of spades. Jane has a couple of hearts, but she also has a four of spades, so she must play that because you have to follow suit if you can. So Elizabeth is still winning.

Next Bingley, who doesn’t have any spades, plays a four of hearts. Since this is a card from the trump suit, he is now winning.
Finally, Darcy has neither a spade nor a heart, so he can play a slough card (sometimes called a discard) and plays a two of clubs.

Bingley wins the trick.

Notice there are lots of phrases that come from this style of card game that you have probably heard used in other contexts, such as “playing the trump card”, “following suit”, and “missing a trick”.

Loo Rules

Now that you know how trick-taking works, here’s how Loo works. There are three card and five card variations of Loo, but I’ll explain the five card version.

At the start of the game, five chips are added to the pool by the dealer.
Each player is dealt five cards, then a card is flipped over to reveal the trump suit for that hand.

Each player looks at their hand and decides if they want to play or fold. If they play, they may exchange any number of their cards for new cards.

Then players proceed to try to win tricks as described above.
In five card Loo, there are five possible tricks to be won. For every trick you win, you get one-fifth of the pot.

If you go through a round without winning any tricks, you have been “looed” and you add five more chips to the pool.

There are some additional rules in five-card Loo that can affect play:

First, the jack of clubs is referred to as “Pam”, and trumps everything else in the game.

Second, after the dealing and exchanging of cards, if you have a flush, you can win the entire pool immediately. These are (in order of precedence) a “Pam” flush, which is the Jack of clubs, plus four other cards of the same suit; followed by a trump-flush (five cards of the trump suit); and then a regular flush (five cards of any other suit).

If the pool is won in this way, play begins again.

There are some additional variations on five-card loo, but the most significant is “Unlimited Loo”.

In “Unlimited Loo”, instead of adding five more chips, you have to add an amount equal to the current value of the pool. This version of loo can lead to extremely large amounts being won and lost in a short amount of time.

Conclusion

That wraps up episode 9 of season 2 of My Cousin Jane.

As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help us out, please consider supporting us by heading over to MyCousinJane.com and clicking on the little donate button.

Either way, thanks so much for listening.