Jennifer Kloester Read online

  Cutaway of a London house.

  Whether a house was old or new, the layout was fairly uniform, with the main living areas on the ground and first floors, the bedrooms, schoolroom and nursery on the two floors above that, the kitchen, scullery, housekeeper’s and butler’s rooms and a sleeping area for the footman in the basement, the housemaids’ quarters in the attic and the wine and coal in the cellars. The living areas usually included, on the ground floor, an entrance hall, saloon, dining room and possibly a library or book-room. It was the Marquis of Alverstoke’s book-room rather than the saloon or drawing-room to which Frederica was escorted when she arrived at his town mansion in Berkeley Square in the company of two park-keepers and a shrill, ‘hatchet-faced’ woman. The drawing-room was on the first floor and was often a double room or adjoined by a saloon with double doors which could be opened to create one large room. On the next floor were the (usually separate) bedchambers used by the master and mistress of the house and, in more progressive households, possibly a bathroom like the lavish one installed by Jenny Chawleigh’s father in A Civil Contract. A dressing room adjoined each bedroom (although a man might sometimes have his dressing room located rather inconveniently on a separate floor) and ladies sometimes used their dressing room as a small daytime sitting room. Children’s bedrooms, the nursery and schoolroom were on the floor above and older boys and girls often had separate rooms. Very large houses sometimes had a ballroom on the ground floor at the back of the house which could accommodate several hundred people. Lord and Lady Ombersley of The Grand Sophy were hosts at a grand ball for five hundred invited guests which was held in the ballroom of their house in Berkeley Square. Lit by a magnificent candle-filled chandelier and decorated with flowers, the Ombersley ball was one of the great successes of the Season.

  The living areas of most London town houses were furnished with large and small tables, various kinds of chairs, couches, footstools, chandeliers, candelabra, carpets, curtains, paintings, tapestries, objets d’art and the other accoutrements that enhanced the occupants’ comfort and were a way of subtly (or not so subtly) demonstrating degrees of wealth and status to one’s guests. Bedrooms were generally well-appointed suites, though more sparsely furnished than the living rooms with just a bed, wardrobe, chair, dressing table or washstand, a floor rug and a free-standing mirror. In April Lady Nell Cardross’s husband had her bedroom transformed into a romantic boudoir with rose-silk curtains around a magnificent tent bed and the adjoining dressing room hung with blue and silver brocade. Ladies sometimes had a secretaire or writing desk in their bedroom or small sitting room and a couch or daybed there as well for the occasional daytime repose.

  Gracious living was the order of the day in the drawing-rooms

  of many London town houses.

  Every bedroom had its chamber-pot (placed discreetly under the bed for easy access during the night), and water-closets were becoming increasingly popular in upper- and wealthy middle-class houses. It had taken centuries to develop an efficient, workable toilet but in 1778 Joseph Bramah had patented his valve-operated water-closet and by 1797 had reportedly sold some 6,000 of them. In 1813 the Earl of Moira’s country house in Leicestershire boasted two bathrooms and six water-closets and his wife even had her own elegantly appointed personal bathroom and WC adjoining her dressing room. Jonathan Chawleigh’s passion for new inventions in A Civil Contract caused him to have the latest Bramah water-closet installed under a staircase in Adam and Jenny’s Grosvenor Street house. In houses without the modern conveniences, use of the chamber-pot (emptied out the window) or privy (a seat over a hole in the ground and located out the back of the house) continued to be used.

  In Arabella the heroine rescued Jemmy the climbing-boy from his ruthless master.

  Lighting was gradually improved during the Regency and from the early 1800s many upper-class houses used oil-lamps in addition to the traditional tallow and wax candles by which most homes were lit. Chandeliers and candelabra of all sizes used hundreds of candles to light ballrooms, drawing-rooms and dining rooms, while a single candle in a holder might be enough to light a bedroom. Gas lighting was introduced during the period and, although in 1821 the Prince Regent had gas installed at the Brighton Pavilion in order to light the decorative glass windows at night it was to be many years before the system was refined enough for widespread domestic use. Peregrine Taverner in Regency Buck was awestruck by the magnificent central chandelier above the dining table when he was one of several guests invited to the Pavilion for one of the Regent’s famous bachelor dinner parties.

  Keeping warm, even in the grandest houses, could be challenging. Most rooms had a fireplace and fires were usually lit in the early morning in the bedrooms and after breakfast or, as required, in the main living rooms. Coal was the main form of fuel in the cities but fires were a most inefficient form of heating as much of the heat went straight up the chimney. In some houses fires were kept burning throughout the day only in the winter months and then only in the main living rooms of the house. In Cotillion miserly Mr Penicuik allowed only the smallest fires to be lit in the main rooms at Arnside even in the coldest weather which caused his ward, Kitty Charing, to be especially grateful for the unexpected luxury of a fire in her bedroom when she visited London. Winter temperatures often extended into autumn and spring and it was not uncommon in wealthy (and less penny-pinching) households for fires to be lit nine months of the year. In houses with several main rooms, chimneys had to be swept at least every three months and the narrow flues (about a foot in diameter) meant that small boys, known as climbing-boys, were often sent into the chimneys to clear out the accumulated soot. When a climbing-boy fell down the chimney in Arabella the heroine was horrified to discover the exact nature of the abuses endured by the seven-year-old Jemmy. An appalling practice, this form of chimney-sweeping saw many children under the age of eight abused, injured and killed, and from 1817 humanitarians intensified their efforts to make the use of climbing-boys illegal and have the custom abolished.

  ON THE FRINGE: HANS TOWN AND RUSSELL SQUARE

  Although in the eighteenth century Mayfair had still been home to builders, tradespeople and shopkeepers as well as the upper class they serviced, by the time of the Regency the area was felt by many to be the exclusive preserve of the acknowledged leaders of fashionable society and members of the aristocracy. For those families with fortunes made in commerce, trade or one of the professions and possessed by a burning ambition to enter polite society, the next best thing to a house in Mayfair was an address in one of the districts adjacent to that exclusive quarter. Upper Wimpole and Harley Streets to the north, Russell Square in Bloomsbury to the north-east and Sloane Street and Hans Town to the south were often chosen as suitable residential areas by those on the social fringe. Such a move could also be slightly problematic, however, as the Merrivilles discovered in Frederica, for in upper-class circles the revelation that a person had an address in Upper Wimpole Street, or one of these new estates—Russell Square and Hans Town were often stigmatised as new rich—could lead to social exclusion.

  MORE MODEST DWELLINGS

  Social standing within the middle class, where ranking was subtle and complex, was largely determined by the extent to which a household employed domestic help, purchased luxury goods and increased the amount of time free from work. Middle-class houses varied greatly in size and furnishings but even the smallest and most modest households were usually distinguished from those of the poorer classes by having more than two main rooms, a separate kitchen close to a water supply, and a single family with at least one servant as occupants. Furze Farm, owned by the young and handsome Mr Mudgley in The Foundling, was a moderately sized dwelling set in freehold land, large enough to house a family comfortably but decidedly middle class with the occupants doing much of the domestic and farm work assisted by a servant girl and a number of hired hands. Further up the middle-class ranks, houses could be as large as any of those owned by the upper class and with as many (or m