Author Archives: Angelyn

The Real Regency Vampire

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At the dawn of the Regency, vampires had little to show for themselves in literature. What had been written of them was neither compelling nor seductive. There was the bat that had attacked the king in Sir Burges’ poem Richard the First (1801). The slave dealer in Montgomery’s 1807 The West Indies was a “bloated vampire of a living man.” In 1810, His Grace the Duke of Norfolk found himself the embarrassed object of an obscure poem’s dedication about a goblin entitled The Vampire. Miss Aiken, in her 1811 Epistles on Women, decried those polluting “vampire forms.”

Then came The Vampyre in 1819. Critics promptly gave it the kiss of death:

Villa Diodati - watering hole of the junta

Villa Diodati – where the junta rusticated

“a flat and feeble tale of supernatural horrors.” Edinburgh Monthly Review

“one (and we are happy to believe the last) of that travelling junta of our country-folk..” Antheneum

That “travelling junta” would be Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, who spent part of 1816, that “year without a summer” in a scandalous interlude at a Swiss villa. To be part of a junta was not what bothered Byron. It was the fact that the “vampyre” was neither a bat nor parasitic slave trader, but a suave English aristocrat.  Not unlike himself:

“A bustling inhabitant of the world..restless and erratic..subject to pecuniary embarrassments.” — Monthly Review, 1919

Pecuniary embarrassments aside, the fact the creature had been christened Ruthven left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to its identity. This was entirely due to the efforts of Lady Caroline Lamb a few years before in 1816’s Glenarvon. Her character was also named Ruthven, but everyone knew him as Byron–the villain who had so cruelly abandoned her.

To add insult to injury, the publisher had the effrontery of passing off The Vampyre as Byron’s own work.

The devil!

The notion was not so farfetched to the average Regency reader. It must be remembered that Byron had written of vampires before. His Giaour (1813) featured an infidel who indulged in an illicit affair with a pasha’s harem girl. She had been tossed into the sea to die whereupon the giaour killed the pasha. Byron’s narrator predicted the giaour would eventually suffer the fate of the vampire, rise from the dead and suck the blood of his loved ones, to his everlasting torment.

Perhaps Byron might not have added the following footnote to Giaour if he knew one day he might be made into a vampire himself:

“The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant…I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. The freshness of the face, and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of those foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly attested.”

This picture of the modern vampiric nobleman is provided courtesy of Find a Grave

This picture of the modern vampiric nobleman is provided courtesy of:               Find a Grave

Amid a flurry of protestations and recriminations over the vile Vampyre and his story, it was eventually revealed that one Dr. John Polidori was the true author, whom “we cannot imagine what mental disease could induce Lord Byron to endure for a moment.” The good doctor was in attendance during the interlude at the Villa Didorati (the lodging of the aforementioned junta). There he had served in the capacity of Byron’s own personal sawbones before they parted in ways less than amicable.

Dr. Polidori was astonished at the vindictive hurled in his direction, which went something like this:

“The publication of that vile abortion, ‘The Vampyre‘ under the name of the greatest of living geniuses, was a wrong… which will not be easy for the perpetrator to expiate.”

He hastily insisted that the work was never meant to see the light of day, that he had placed the manuscript into the care of an unnamed lady, who later gave it to an unscrupulous publisher, who unleashed it upon an unsuspected Public wholly and wantonly without permission.

Amid the flurry of these protestations and recriminations, the aforementioned Public devoured the work, giving it an astounding success.

It was the birth of a new subgenre within the Gothic novel.

Regency Wrecks: Voyage to Paradise (part two)

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It is perhaps ironic that Alceste was leaving China just as Medusa’s captain was being brought to trial. Captain Maxwell had already lost Daedalus and was having the depths continuously sounded as his ship passed between steep rock reefs. When she did strike one, it was at speed and the ship’s carpenter reported the worst. To get her off the reef would cause her to sink instantly. The ship had to be abandoned, the only refuge a nearby, waterless mangrove island surrounded by pirate-infested waters.

Maxwell had indeed landed in the basket. With the loss of two ships to his name, he must redeem himself in some spectacular way or sink into ignominy and disgrace.

William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst by Davies (1803)

William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst by Davies (1803)

Lord Amherst and his embassy were sent in the ship’s barge and cutter toward Java, leagues to the south. Hopefully they would reach that distant island and send back a rescue party. Maxwell did not dare go with them, He had to remain behind with his crew and remaining passengers, numbering 200 men and one woman.

Once Amherst and his embassy had disappeared beyond the stifling horizon, Maxwell wasted no time setting about his redemption. Soon the wreck would be spotted by inhospitable natives and he would have to be ready. Provisions were stowed in a cool cave and the crew was set to digging a well, searching for fresh water, for they had sent the bulk of their water supplies with his lordship. With the remaining lifeboats, a crew was sent back out to the Alceste to salvage what remained on her.

Sea-dyaks on proas (multi-hulled Micronesian sailing vessels) caught the salvage crew by surprise and chased them back to the mangrove island. These ruthless Malay pirates had the reputation for murdering anyone on board ships they captured and were even known to commit cannibalism. It soon appeared that the Dyaks were most concerned with the wreck and its contents–principally anything that was metal–and seemed content to plunder the Alceste rather than assault the makeshift fortress Maxwell and his men had hastily constructed.

Eventually, the Dyaks set fire to the Alceste and withdrew with their booty. This gave Maxwell a chance to send another boat out to the wreck and retrieve flour, wine and beer that had been exposed by the destruction of Alceste’s upper works.

The Dyaks were bound to return for the castaways on the island, who were by now starving, thirsty and ragged. When the pirates appeared, they had more boats, including a flagship, perhaps carrying a “rajah.” They continued to plunder the wrecked vessel and made forays to capture the remaining boats on the island. These were repelled but eventually, the time of a great attack had come.

Captain Maxwell addressed his men:

“My lads, you must all have observed the great increase in the enemy’s force, and the threatening posture they have assumed. I have reason to believe they will attack us this night. I do not wish to conceal our real state, because I do not think there is a man here who is afraid to face any sort of danger. We are in a position to defend ourselves against regular troops, far less a set of naked savages, with their spears and krises. ..Let every man be on his alert, and should these barbarians this night attempt our hill, I trust we shall convince them that they are dealing with Britons.”

Morning came without the expected attack. Instead, a much larger force of Dyaks had arrived by boat. The situation could not be more desperate. The relief ship that was supposed to have been sent by Lord Amherst had not arrived. Perhaps he felt compelled to abandon such an unlucky captain. Or perhaps his lordship and his party had met with some grim fate before they could get to Java.

With this in mind, it became rapidly clear to Maxwell that they had to get off the island or be slaughtered. To get off the island, he and his men needed boats. The Dyaks had them.

Maxwell sent his marines down to the shore to capture them. Wading into the sea, they aimed their muskets but were unable to keep steady aim in the strong tide. The Dyaks surged forward on their swift proas, screaming with savage delight. Then one piercing cry from the direction of the Alceste came–a pirate lookout, pausing in his plunder, was gesturing wildly toward the open sea.

On the searing horizon, the topmast of the Honorable East India Company’s Ternate appeared, and she was armed to the teeth. She had been sent by Lord Amherst to rescue his favorite captain–sent the very day the Alceste’s barge had landed in Java.

Captain Maxwell was soon on his way back to England. The ship carrying him stopped at St. Helena and the captain was presented to Napoleon. Perhaps Maxwell was looking a bit chagrined, this captain who had lost two French frigates and was on his way home to be court-martialed. However, the exiled emperor received him with great courtesy and remarked, rather sourly, that he should not be blamed by the British government. At least what he had lost had been taken from another to begin with.

L’emperor had lost much more than just Meduse, Minerve and Corona.

“Vous êtes très méchant. Eh bien!” he said to Maxwell.

Shipwreck of the Minotaur by JMW Turner (1810)

Shipwreck of the Minotaur by JMW Turner (1810)

Regency Wrecks: Voyage to Paradise (Part One)

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“I see the boat on the lake! Cpatain Murray Maxwell
And Charon,
Ferryman of the Dead, Calls to me, his hand on the oar:
‘Why linger? Hasten! You delay me!’
Angrily he urges me.”– Alcestis, by Euripedes (438 BC)

She was once known as the Minerve, a proud, 38-gun Armide-class frigate of the French Navy. Like Corona, she had been captured by the British during the Napoleonic Wars. Towed to Plymouth, she was refitted and renamed Alceste, for the queen who would be called upon to die in place of her husband, Admetus, one of Greek mythology’s Argonauts.

Perhaps this was an omen.

In 1807, before he was to wreck Daedalus, Captain Maxwell was given the command of Alceste. Instructed to go to the Mediterranean, Maxwell and his ship raided Spanish shipping carrying supplies for Napoleon’s armies. Their greatest success came during the Adriatic Campaign when Alceste intercepted a convoy of French frigates. After a heated battle, a large ship Pomone and an accompanying storage vessel carrying 200 cannon surrendered to Maxwell. The ships and cargo were sold for prize money. By 1812, Alceste had made her captain a wealthy man.

Who knows what might have been her fate had Maxwell gone down with the Daedalus the next year?

But he did not. A court martial proceeding cleared him from all blame for the loss of the former Corona. Captain Maxwell had money, friends–and a second chance with Alceste.

Lord Amherst was to go to China and establish relations with its emperor. He chose Captain Maxwell to transport him and his diplomatic mission. The captain was given command of Alceste once again. Unfortunately, Amherst’s mission was doomed to failure. As an Englishman, he had opposed one emperor in Europe and saw no reason to kowtow to another, refusing to offer tribute as to an overlord.

La Pomone contre les frégates HMS Alceste et Active, by Pierre Julien Gilbert

Pomone fights the frigates HMS Alceste and Active, by Pierre Julien Gilbert

Angrily Alceste was directed to withdraw with her insulted passengers aboard, and sailed to the mouth of the Pearl River. There she was confronted by a blockade of junks. These were summarily disposed of by the frigate’s numerous cannon, the first shot marked with a note the said something like, “here’s your bloody tribute.”

With this parting shot, the Alceste set sail for England. The last peril she had to pass was the Gaspar Strait.

Regency Wrecks: “The Dangerous Area”

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In England, there was a good deal of schadenfreude accompanying the outrage following the sensational wreck of the Medusa. The French in command of a French frigate–the best possible combination for maritime incompetence, they said, Even the masterful painting of the drifting raft of desperate survivors received tumultuous applause in London because Monsieur Gericault’s effort was:

“of the utmost difficulty, and with a singular absence of the national vanity ascribed to his countrymen, one which it would be well for the naval character for France to have blotted from her maritime annals.” — the Globe (1820)  the Hortense

Had British seamen been at her helm, such a disaster might have been diverted. Unless one happens to be sailing in a place known as “The Dangerous Area.”

Off the southern coast of present-day Sri Lanka lie two great coral reefs and accompanying rocks called the Great and the Little Basses. Unlike the Arguin Bank that the Medusa foundered upon, these formations along Ceylon’s shores, as it was known in those days, were well-documented and mapped. Yet time and again, ships fell victim to their deadly projections.

Some believed it was the haze that lay over the water, so that:

“..even in the day time those excellent landmarks along the shore, which, if, discernible, afford an infallible guide, cannot occasionally be distinguished when close to the Basses.” —  The Nautical Magazine (1848)

But that didn’t account for the number of wrecks that occurred at nighttime, and to ships that were well out to sea. Or, so they thought.

On several occasions, from 1792 to 1804, English ships believed to be well away from the treacherous reefs would suddenly find themselves during the night observing breakers, the signal they were among the rocks. It was as if the alien shore had lured their vessels toward danger like the Sirens of old.

The Corona was a forty-gun frigate of the Hortense class, built for the French Navy. Like her sister ship the Caroline, she had been captured by the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Corona’s decks were covered with the blood of her dead captain and 200 of her crew before she was set ablaze by her captors. Pulled to Malta, she was repaired and renamed the Daedalus, now in the Prince Regent’s service.

She was given to the command of Captain Murray Maxwell, grandson of the Second Baronet of Monreith. She nearly ruined his naval career.

Daedalus was escorting East India Company ships Atlas and Bridgewater to China. Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, is the gateway to the South China Sea. Captains knew to pass by its coast well to the south and avoid the reefs there altogether. Yet somehow, by morning, to everyone’s surprise and alarm, it was discovered the ships were among the Basses:  Shipwreck - North Sea

“..the Atlas grazed outside the Little Basses, and soon after that the Daedalus struck on a reef within the Basses, and the Bridgewater, close on the starboard side of the frigate, grazed over the same reef, but she bore away and passed between the Little and the Great Basses as did the rest of the fleet…” —The Nautical Magazine (1848)

Daedalus was doomed. To haul her off the reef would sink her faster than leaving her where she was. Almost to the minute that everyone was evacuated, she keeled over and sank.

Later, it was discovered that strong underwater currents exist all along the southern coast of Ceylon, capable of hauling even a British frigate to places it never intended to go. Because these conditions seems to be especially strong at night, the British government eventually installed two lighthouses to warn ships of their proximity to “The Dangerous Area.”

Regency Wrecks

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Ship surgeon Jean Baptiste Henri Savigny reached Paris on September 11, 1816, having just survived an ordeal that was to become a sensation of the Regency. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, a tiny paragraph was inserted in the newspapers that the ship he sailed on, the Medusa, had been lost off the coast of West Africa.

Shipwreck was common in those days, but Monsieur Savigny carried with him a singular account of his ordeal. He had been one of the survivors consigned to a cumbersome raft to be pulled by one of the ship’s lifeboats to safety. He submitted his diary to the French government, detailing:

“the hasty and chaotic abandonment of the Medusa and detailing the suffering of the 150 people on the raft. Although soberly and tightly written, the facts of cannibalism and butchery were in themselves sensational. Nor had he concealed the fact that the towrope of the raft has been deliberately cast off by the First Lieutenant of the Medusa, amid cries of “Let’s abandon them!”

Turner's Shipwreck (1805)

Turner’s Shipwreck (1805)

Monsieur Savigny was simply looking to be compensated for his expenses incurred by his voyage home, and for the loss of his property in the shipwreck. The government accepted his account and did nothing. However, a copy of his account was carried away. The damning story of the Wreck was published soon after and it was not long before English translations of it were available to Regency England. It was a sensation, the story of French sailors and captain, charged with the responsibility and safety of their passengers, deliberately abandoning them to a fate of privations so horrible that an entire Nation was shamed before all Europe.

This is not the first time this blog has addressed the singular catastrophe that was known as the Wreck of the Medusa. It was a powerful subject of the Romantic age, a sublime image of depravity and abandonment in an age that prided itself for culture and civilization. I am compelled to return to this subject matter because these occurrences captured the attention of Regency society. There are other Regency wrecks that bear attending to, of other French ships under Britain’s flag, and the heroism of their crews that inspired even the admiration of Jane Austen.

The Real Regency Reader: Jane Austen

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“It is difficult to think of a novelist who makes reading a more animating part of her characters’ lives than Jane Austen.”

–John Mullan, What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (2013)

We know how Northanger Abbey’s heroine, like Cotillion’s Kitty, was much guided by knowledge gleaned from novels and therefore committed foibles as a result of such reliance. Or Fanny of Mansfield Park who had rather more learning from books than those rich Bertram girls who supposed her ‘stupid at learning.’ Already mentioned is Sir Elliot of Kellynch Hall in Persuasion whose reading was limited to the Baronetage and so, too, was his conversation. Recall in Pride and Prejudice Miss Bingley’s spectacular attempts at diverting Mr. Darcy from his book when a day earlier she had attacked our darling Lizzie for not playing cards because she loved books.

1940's Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier

1940’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier

I did not understand the significance of reading in Jane Austen’s world until it was illuminated by Professor Mullan:  being literate during the Regency means reading books. In Sense and Sensibility, Lucy Steele is illiterate not because she can’t read, but because she does not read.

“Lucy’s ignorance of books will be as much a torment to poor Edward, her future husband, as her cunning and self-interestedness.”

This blog has mentioned the value of book collecting during the Regency, A library of any size was a mark of distinction because it conferred upon those who had access to it an erudition valued in those days. Professor Mullan points out that Austen had no more than two years’ formal schooling but yet had access to her father’s library which was vast for a country clergyman.

One must suspect that her admiration for books and reading must reflect what Regency readers must have thought:

“I only mean what I have read about.  It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho (Penguin Classics). But you never read novels, I dare say?”

“Why not?”

“Because they are not clever enough for you — gentlemen read better books.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Mansfield Park

The Real Regency Reader: A World Without Souls

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In 1805, John William Cunningham had the great fortune of marrying Sophia Williams, youngest daughter of a wealthy Hertfordshire merchant. She gave him nine children and her papa bought him the living of Harrow-on-the-Hill. As vicar, he could leave many duties to his curate, and concentrate on his Calling–sermonizing.

Sophia's father owned Moor Park. Photographed by Nigel Cox, Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0

Sophia’s father owned Moor Park. Photographed by Nigel Cox, Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0

Unfortunately, there was only so much sermonizing the people in the village could take.

To reach the faithful beyond Harrow-on-the-Hill, John was determined to publish a book of sermons. However, he must have realized his potential readers, like the villagers, might be put off by his message. He decided to put forth his evangelizing effort in the guise of a Novel. His publisher, the venerable Hatchards, evidently approved.

John wrote his novel after the fashion of a work he much admired, The Story of La Roche, which follows the travels of a Christian philosopher and his beautiful daughter, Madamoiselle La Roche. It was a French tale serialized in The Mirror (not the current tabloid, but a late eighteenth century magazine out of Edinburgh). Incidentally, the editor warned the readers of the Mirror in the preface to La Roche that the work had a religious theme.

Inspired, John dashed off A World Without Souls. In it, a young man, Gustavus, leaves his home and the girl he is much attached to and travels abroad (to a place very like Regency England) in the company of a wise mentor. They come to a place resembling Hyde Park where the ladies and gentlemen are in full promenade on Sunday:

“But have they no veneration for the Sabbath?”

“Yes..the females do their utmost..by enforcing servants and horses upon unnecessary employments, to defraud two beasts of their lawful rest, and shut out two souls from heaven.”

Harrow-on-the-Hill

Harrow-on-the-Hill

Souls was well-received by some, but excoriated by others. Not because it was religious in nature, but that it sought to fool the reader into thinking it was a novel. And one should never try to fool the Regency reader:

“We cannot say that such flimzy disguises altogether please our taste. They remind us of a coarse and clumsy deception well known to and put into practice by Essex shepherds. When an ewe has lost a lamb by premature death, these men strip the fleece off the carcase, and fasten it on the young of some other ewe, in order to induce the mourner to suckle the substitute.

With the silly animal the imposture succeeds. Not so does it fare with man. We detect, we smile, we contempt, we are disgusted.”

— The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle (1813)

John was completely unapologetic. Even in the epilogue of his novel, he disparages the notion his young male character be reunited with his love:

“If I marry Gustavus and Emily, it will be objected to me, that it is incredible a tale of truth like mine should terminate like a novel (!)”

The Real Regency Reader: The Miser Married

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One popular book on the Regency bookshelf was written by an unlikely spinster, Catherine Hutton (1756-1846). She used the character of a spendthrift to conquer a miser in her 1813 novel The Miser Married, A Novel. The story is mostly a series of letters, many consisting of a daughter’s observations of her widowed mother’s adventures and those of the widower Mama sets her cap for.

Catherine Hutton

Catherine Hutton

The novel opens with Mr. Winterdale, a gentleman of some means who keeps to himself and known to be ever careful of his money. He is quite aware of his new neighbors:

“The lady who has taken Ravenhill Lodge is come to it, with her family, which Martha tells me consists of a daughter and a niece. She says Mrs. Mereval is a handsome woman, not more than eight and thirty, and that the two girls are very beautiful. So they may be for me. I had a glance of two female figures, peeping through the lattice of the little door in the park wall, and I sent for the carpenter directly, to nail it up with boards. These women may, perhaps, think they have a right to be acquainted with me, because they chuse to come and live at the next house. I can tell them that will be no easy matter.”

Then we have the daughter’s letter, written in the wake of being diverted from reading her novels:

“Which, my dear Harriet, in the catalogue of human events, do you think capable of bringing Mr. Winterdale to our house? ..not for a morning call but a positive inmate; eating, drinking and sleeping under our roof? You are mute with astonishment; at length you answer, “a broken leg, perhaps.” Your conjecture is exactly right.”

Throughout the three volumes of the novel, the series of letters from the characters cleverly display a wide range of personalities in a diverting tale of the miser and the beautiful widow. The author is not above commenting on other Regency books, relying on the aforesaid novel-reading daughter:

Mrs. Hannah More–Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending observations on domestic habits : “Wicked novel reader as I am, I confess that, in some of her long arguments, I turned over six leaves, instead of one!”

On Maria Edgeworth’s Lenora: “The moral purpose of Leonora is to persuade woman to attend to her duties, rather than her rights. In a word, to counteract Mary Wollstonecroft.”

Of Holcroft and his Anna St. Ives: “(It) is written, as the author, himself, declares, to inculcate the lesson of fortitude to females. I admire her fortitude; but I think her rather too philosophical, for a young lady.”

Miss Hutton was an expert on characterization, a talent highly prized by Regency readers. As such, she was certainly aware of how her keen observations might strike a nerve in more than one quarter. In her Prologue, she lays bare her trepidation in releasing her first novel to the “awful Tribunal of the Public.”

She knows she is an unlikely novel-writer, being only certain of her ability to make a variety of puddings:

“..but that I possessed the inherent qualities necessary to write a book, was not suspected by me, till lately.”

What Ravenhill might have looked like. Remote.

What Ravenhill might have looked like. Remote.

The Real Regency Reader

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Reading was an important pastime in the Regency. With more leisure came more time. And more reading.

In Heyer’s Cotillion, the heroine has had more than enough leisure time at her guardian’s dreary country house, with nothing but her governess’s bookshelf to entertain–and educate her. She elicits the aid of the hero, who, if he can be persuaded to enter into a pretend engagement with her, will take her to London. There she might have the opportunity to bring the dilatory Mr. Westruther up to scratch.

This is the copy I have--from 1968--the hair is a little That Girl, don't you think?

This is the copy I have–from 1968–the hair is a little That Girl, don’t you think?

“No, dash it!” protested Mr. Standen. “Not if you’re engaged to me, Kit!”

She became intent on smoothing the wrinkles from her gloves. Her colour considerably heightened, she said: “No. Only–If there did happen to be some gentleman who–who wished to marry me, do you think he would be deterred by that, Freddy?”

“Be a curst rum touch if he wasn’t, ” replied Freddy unequivocally.

“Yes, but–If he had a partiality for me, and found I had become engaged to Another,” said Kitty, drawing on a knowledge of life culled from the pages of such novels as graced Miss Fishguard’s bookshelf, “he might be wrought upon by jealousy.”

“Who?” demanded Freddy, out of his depth.

“Anyone!” said Kitty.

“But there ain’t anyone!” argued Freddy.

“No,” agreed Kitty, damped. “It was just a passing thought, and not of the least consequence! I shall seek a situation.”

What you read during the Regency was generally held to be informative of your character. In the case of Jane Austen’s novels, you might recall the sensible Anne Elliott in Persuasion enjoys prose and views Mr. Benwick’s inordinate fondness for poetry with a little alarm. Her father, on the other hand, “never took up any book but the Baronetage.”

Then again, too much reliance shouldn’t be placed on a person’s reading selections as a guide to their makeup. This next series of posts is intended to illustrate how diverse a real Regency book can be, and its reader as well. For instance, a novel might deliver a moral tale better than a collection of the vicar’s sermons from Harrow-on-Gate. Also, females thought to be flighty because of their penchant for Gothic tales suddenly reveal themselves to have a will of iron.

Just ask the Honorable Frederick Standen.

The Real Regency Hoyden: according to Jane Austen

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The word “hoyden” appears in none of Jane Austen’s writings. But we know one in her novels when we see her.

When Lydia Bennett was discovered to have been living in sin with Mr. Wickham, her uncle Mr. Gardiner wrote the following in a letter back to Longbourn in the most ominous tones:

‘She was sure they should be married some time or other, and it did not much signify when.’ — Pride and Prejudice

Sally Siddons, a hoyden in some books, by Thomas Lawrence

Sally Siddons, a hoyden in some books, by Thomas Lawrence

To make matters worse, Lydia remained entirely immune to Mr. Darcy’s remonstrations. Her behavior, and the reaction of others, make for some of the best commentary on the real Regency hoyden.

The Wickhams’ living together before marriage was not what inspired the most condemnation.  It was the way they, and most particularly Lydia, carried on with complete impunity. She was quite insensible to the notion she ought to be made into an honest woman (a euphemism that ironically denies the true state of affairs–Lydia Bennett is as honest a woman as one might find in the Regency.) And when she is made whole by a wedding brought about by a bribe, she returns to home full of self-satisfaction.

There is plenty of sermonizing. Mr. Collins seems most appalled over Lydia’s lack of humility and remorse. He reserves the worst condemnation for her:

“The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.”

A fitting end to hoydenish behavior.

Austen’s letters reveal still more about the real Regency hoyden. Naughty escapades almost always refer to members of the aristocracy. Her correspondence, like her novels, focus on the fact such characters manage to attend the most exclusive parties even after their debaucheries. Somehow they inveigle invitations to functions as if nothing bad had ever happened.

The notorious Mary-Cassandra Twistleton received special notice in Austen’s 1801 letter to her sister. Amazed that this divorcee should appear in the Upper Rooms at Bath, the author was astonished at how a woman generally acknowledged to have committed adultery might appear unconcerned in company at a select gathering:

“I am very proud to say that I have a very good eye at an Adultress, for tho’ repeatedly assured that another in the same party was the She, I fixed upon the right one from the first.”

In March 1817, she wrote to her niece Fanny, commenting acidly on a recent engagement of a daughter of Lord Paget, divorced from his lady wife some years before:

If I were the Duchess of Richmond, I should be very miserable about my son’s choice. What can be expected from a Paget, from and brought up in the centre of conjugal Infidelity and Divorces?–I will not be interested about Lady Caroline. I abhor all the race of Pagets.

Divorce was not at issue–it was the temerity of the daughter to wed publicly.

Hoydenish, for certain.