Jennifer Kloester Read online

  For a younger son of noble birth but modest means, the hope was that he would marry an heiress or at least a well-born woman of property. The difficulty was that younger sons were considered, for the most part, a very poor bargain when compared with the eldest son and heir, and they often married those younger daughters of the nobility who had not managed to find a wealthier husband. As the elder of aristocratic twin brothers, Evelyn Fancot of False Colours was deemed a far more desirable parti than his equally handsome and charming sibling, Kit. Although arranged marriages were less common during the Regency than they once had been, among the aristocracy and the royal family they were considered an important way of safeguarding or strengthening bloodlines, family fortunes and inheritances. The Duke of Sale felt compelled to offer for the hand of Lady Harriet Presteigne when it was made clear to him in The Foundling that his uncle had arranged the marriage and Lady Harriet was expecting his proposal. Sometimes parents (especially fathers) exercised a right of veto over their offspring’s choice of marriage partner, although such injunctions were not necessarily adhered to and determined sons and daughters would flout parental authority and either marry by special licence or elope to Gretna Green as Gerard Monksleigh persuaded his young love to do in Bath Tangle. It was rare, however, even for an eloped couple to marry outside their social circle or where there was no fortune on at least one side.

  BUCKS, BEAUS AND DANDIES

  The buck: The term generally referred to the bloods or sporting types, but could also mean a man of spirit. The buck usually stood out from the crowd and a ‘buck of the first head’ was a man who pursued every kind of pleasure and often surpassed his friends in debauchery.

  The beau: Despite the literal meaning of the word, a man did not have to be handsome to be a beau. Although several of the Regency beaus had pleasing countenances, the epithet was applied more on the basis of a man’s place in the fashionable world rather than his looks or dress. A beau was a leader in society like Sir Richard Wyndham of The Corinthian and while he was often an arbiter of fashion, he could also acquire the nickname as a result of his manners, eccentricities, noble rank, clever wit or some other trait that set him apart or made him notorious. To be a beau, a man needed either vanity, idiosyncrasy, a desire for attention or remarkable good looks and town polish but, above all, he had to have ‘Presence’.

  The Corinthian: This term described the well-dressed athlete. A Corinthian was a man who, as Mr Beaumaris told Arabella in Arabella, ‘besides being a very Tulip of Fashion, is an amateur of sport, a master of sword-play, a deadly fellow with a pistol, a Nonpareil amongst whips’. He generally excelled in all the sporting pursuits including fencing, single-stick, boxing, hunting, shooting and tooling his carriage—usually a curricle—preferably with the kind of skill that would see him admitted to the Four-Horse Club. He would also be a man of good character addicted to all forms of sport, at home among all classes and able to cut a dash at Almack’s or blow a cloud with the roughest pugilist at Cribb’s Parlour.

  The dandy: The word ‘dandy’ came into fashion in about 1813 and was used to describe any man who paid particular attention to his clothes and appearance. The Regency was the great age of the dandy and they were the leaders of fashion during this period. Until 1816 Brummell was their king; it was he who ordained that a well-dressed man concentrated on clean linen, exquisite tailoring, a perfectly tied neckcloth, a dark, well-cut coat and a general air of understatement. The elite circle of men who gambled, drank and played together set the fashion for a host of eager imitators, many of whom aspired to join their ranks. Mere clothes could not make a man a dandy, however, nor grant him admission to the inner ranks of the dandy set. A true dandy, such as Gervase Frant, seventh Earl of St Erth, esteemed not just the cut of his coat, but also wit, learning, artistic appreciation, a reserve of manner that seemed like arrogance to lesser mortals, and a demeanour so calm that nothing could impair it. A dandy was generally uninterested in sporting ventures, although he might be proficient in some or all of them.

  The Nonesuch or Nonpareil: He was the incomparable man, one who excelled in all the manly pursuits but was also an arbiter of fashion and a leader in all things aesthetic. He was a man of taste, a person people deferred to, watched and often slavishly copied. He was a setter of fashion, not merely a follower, and, as Sir Waldo Hawkridge explained to Miss Trent in The Nonesuch, his appellation was applied by those who admired his handling of the ribbons, his manners, dress and his athletic ability.

  Pinks and tulips: These names of beautiful flowers were used by the Regency sporting journalist Pierce Egan to denote exceptionally well-turned-out gentlemen. A pink was a man at the height of fashion and a tulip was a fine fellow who dressed well.

  The fop: Like the dandy, the fop took an absorbing interest in his clothes. Unlike the dandy, however, the fop dressed for show, adorning his person with clothes of bold or unusual design or hue and embellishing them with ostentatious jewels, frills and furbelows. The fop craved attention and did everything in his power to draw the eye of the passer-by. He was frequently a chatterer and usually deemed a vain fool by his peers. Sir Nugent Fotherby in Sylvester was the epitome of a fop with his rings, diamond pin, fobs and seals, his extravagant neckcloth, exotic waistcoats and specially designed boots. Many fops aspired to set a trend or create a new fashion and some took their clothes to extraordinary extremes—such as wearing their shirt collars so high that they could not turn their heads or wearing voluminous trousers or coats with overlong tails.

  A fop such as Sir Nugent Fotherby in Sylvester drew every eye with his extravagant dress and accessories.

  A fribble: An effeminate fop, derived from a character in David Garrick’s eighteenth-century farce Miss in her Teens.

  A Bartholomew baby: A person dressed in tawdry or gaudy clothes like the dolls on sale at Bartholomew Fair.

  A coxcomb: A particularly foolish and conceited fop.

  4

  The Gentle Sex

  THE REGENCY WOMAN

  To be born an upper-class woman during the Regency meant being raised to a particular expectation of what that role entailed. As ‘the gentle sex’, women were meant to be both ignorant and devoid of the various vices of the more ‘natural’ man and were generally not expected to have opinions or ideas of a political nature. In Black Sheep, Abigail Wendover’s brother was appalled to learn that she not only knew all about the hero’s rakish past, but had been informed of it by the hero himself. For the most part, a woman’s life was a domestic one and, whether or not she was married and regardless of class, it was accepted that her primary talents were all associated with running a household, bearing children, and being ‘ornamental’. Innocence was also held to be a virtue in the female—both in knowledge and experience—and the fact that many women were extremely knowledgeable and aware of life’s realities was often disguised or kept below the surface veneer of respectable and acceptable behaviour.

  Beauty, taste, modesty, manners, a strong sense of duty and a desire to make a good marriage were esteemed as the most desirable female attributes and girls were trained from birth to abide by the restrictions placed upon them and to conform to their parents’—and later their husband’s—expectations. In The Foundling, Lady Harriet’s mother made it quite clear that, once married, her daughter should turn a blind eye to her husband’s affaires but that she too could take a lover once she had given birth to an heir. That many upper-class women stepped outside the boundaries once they were married, and especially once they had produced an heir, is clear and the lives of society women such as Lady Cowper, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Oxford, Lady Hertford and even the Regent’s wife, Princess Caroline, all bear witness to the flexible morality and often dynamic choices that these women made. Upper-class Regency women understood their world and its often contradictory rules, and frequently chose not only not to play by them but also to manipulate and use them to their advantage. While the general expectation was that a woman should be docile and tractabl