Jennifer Kloester Read online

  Fashionable gentlemen could often be seen tooling a curricle down Piccadilly

  or St James’s Street in London.

  In his daily life the Regency man enjoyed a much wider range of entertainments than his female counterpart. Whereas a female’s reputation was among her most important assets, a male’s reputation was far more resistant to scandal. Married or single, a well-born and well-heeled man could frequently indulge in quite shocking behaviour on the streets and in the bars, brothels and gaming hells of Regency London without becoming a social outcast. Nell Cardross’s reprobate young brother Dysart engaged in all manner of outrageous pranks and even joined Lord Barrymore’s infamous Beggar’s Club without seriously endangering his social standing. When in society, however, he was bound to abide by the protocols and etiquette of his class, like most well-bred gentlemen who adhered to an unwritten code of honour that determined their behaviour in a range of social situations.

  Well-bred men were often seen enjoying the company of loose women,

  or Cyprians, in the foyer of Covent Garden.

  In elite social circles a man was expected to be elegant in both dress and manner when in public and to pay due deference to women and his social superiors. A man’s behaviour in private, when among other men or ‘in his cups’ (never in front of a lady), could be determined by a completely different set of much looser moral standards. In public a man was expected to adhere to the modes and manners of polite society in which, for example, open shows of affection were considered inappropriate and a kiss between a man and a woman denoted an intention to marry—assuming they were of the same class. Class was a powerful factor in determining a man’s behaviour, for a ‘gentleman’ might kiss or make up to a servant girl or country maid with a fair degree of impunity—although in Sprig Muslin the rakish old uncle sends a young servant girl, ‘unused to the ways of the Quality’, into hysterics. In general, the lower classes were expected to understand this sort of behaviour as the way of the Quality and accept that no serious relationship could be expected to result from it. In The Unknown Ajax, dandified Claud Darracott exemplifies this attitude by engaging in a series of flirtations with serving girls, dairymaids and, in the nearby town, the blacksmith’s daughter without any serious intention. Attitudes of the upper class to the middle class were very different, however, and only a scoundrel such as Sir Montagu Revesby in Friday’s Child would stoop to seducing a respectable girl of good family and subsequently deserting her and their bastard child. Paradoxically, upper-class society perceived his sin not in having fathered an illegitimate infant or having multiple affairs but in his not providing for the child. It was, after all, perfectly acceptable to be a rake but not to disregard one’s moral duty. The upper class, despite its insistent demands for propriety, was extraordinarily inconsistent in its responses to the excesses of behaviour by the ton.

  A man’s first responsibility was to his name and to the enhancement of his family’s wealth, power and prestige. On leaving school or university he was usually taken by his father or other well-born male sponsor to a levee (an all-male affair) at St James’s Palace where he would be presented to the monarch or his representative after which he could take his place in society. If he were an eldest son and the heir to an estate he was expected to marry before he was too old to father a son to carry on the family name. It was this responsibility that compelled Sir Gareth Ludlow in Sprig Muslin to seek a suitable bride after his brother Arthur was killed at Salamanca. If a man was a younger son, once he had completed his education it was incumbent upon him to make his way in the world by living within any allowance provided for him or by entering one of the professions. A married man was expected to support his wife and children materially and be discreet in managing his extramarital affairs or in keeping a mistress.

  As a father, a man’s interaction with his children could be extremely limited but he was expected at least to teach his sons the ways of the world, to educate them in manly pursuits such as hunting and shooting, and to impart a sense of duty to the family. For his daughters he was required to enable his wife to ‘fire them off’ into society and to provide a dowry in the event of their marriage. Some chose to involve themselves more fully in their children’s upbringing but society did not usually look askance at those men, like Adam Deveril’s father Bardy Lynton in A Civil Contract, who did little more than father his offspring, provide them with life’s necessities and introduce them into society when they came of age.

  A formal education was considered essential for the upper-class man and he began learning his letters at an early age. At five or six he usually entered the home schoolroom where he was taught by a governess, or a tutor if he had no sisters. A proper education was one grounded in the Classics and most boys were sent away after the age of eight to one of the well-established public schools such as Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s or Winchester. There they were taught Latin, Greek, languages such as French or Italian, history and mathematics in a large schoolroom in the company of several hundred other boys. School life was often extremely harsh and many boys endured meagre servings of poor food, freezing conditions, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, rats in the dormitories, loneliness and anxiety. Parents such as Gerard Monksleigh’s mother in Bath Tangle frequently worried over the rigours and privations of boarding-school life. There were happy moments, however, and many pupils greatly enjoyed the freedoms that life away from home offered and engaged in all manner of pranks and activities both inside and outside the school grounds. Many boys forged friendships during their school years which continued at university and beyond. At the age of sixteen or seventeen boys went up to either Oxford or Cambridge or, like Hugo Darracott in The Unknown Ajax or Adam Deveril in A Civil Contract, went straight into the military.

  Although many young men opted for a life of pleasure while at

  university some students chose an academic life.

  University was considered important, not so much for its academic opportunities (serious study was an option rather than a requirement) but for the social life and the friends and contacts which could be made there. Viscount Pevensey and his devoted and foolish friend, Cornelius Fancot, met at Harrow and embarked on a riotous career of pranks, dares and wagers which, in April Lady, continued during their time at Oxford and became the highlight of their bachelor life in London. The nature of university life, with its emphasis on high-spirited behaviour and apparent acceptance of young men as being naturally inclined to engage in all manner of pranks, dares and other reckless deeds, meant that it was not uncommon for students to find themselves rusticated (sent down or suspended) for at least part of a term as a result of activities deemed unacceptable even by the university authorities, such as riding a horse up the college stairs or, as Nicky Carlyon does in The Reluctant Widow, borrowing a bear to chase a couple of university dons up a tree. Some students did engage in academic life, however, and serious-minded young men such as Aubrey Lanyon in Venetia, who was entered at Trinity College Cambridge, aspired to be scholars and win a fellowship. Young men usually spent two or three years at the university before entering society as fully fledged adults.

  In April Lady Dysart, Viscount Pevensey, was famous at Oxford for leaping

  his hunter over a dining table and engaging in many of the outrageous

  pranks and escapades that were an accepted part of university life.

  A BACHELOR’S LIFE

  During the Regency the life of the well-bred and financially independent bachelor was often one of unalloyed pleasure. After a pleasant spell at either Oxford or Cambridge the sons of the nobility would frequently remove to London and take rooms in one of the many gentlemen’s lodgings in the West End of town. Duke Street, St James’s Place, Clarges Street, Ryder Street or any of the streets in the area of St James’s were popular, as was a set of chambers in Albany. The chambers, or ‘sets’ as they are still called within Albany, were available only to single men and consisted of comfortable bachelor apartments with two spacious