It’s Jane Austen’s Birthday, But You Get the Presents

Authors of past centuries may continue to be read, revered, studied and debated long after their deaths, but I don’t think there’s one who has such a passionate popular following as a genteel but wickedly humorous spinster from a quiet corner of Great Britain who wrote only six completed novels and a handful of lesser and unfinished works.

Yes, you all know who I’m talking about. ☺

Can't you just picture them all huddled over their phones?

This coming Saturday (that's December 16) will be the inimitable Jane Austen’s 242^nd birthday. Well into her third century, she continues to delight readers with her characters’ matrimonial adventures and misadventures...and inspires the question, “How would things have been different for the Bennett sisters if they’d had a good dating app?" The BBC thinks they might have an answer...

   

On a slightly more serious note, research into The Divine Jane’s work and life continue—not only on the content of her work, but how she put it together. There’s a saying among writers that writing is revising, and it’s very true: the books you see on bookstore shelves have been written, re-written, revised, polished, edited, and possibly re-written and revised and polished again. For us spoiled writers of the 21^st century, our trusty computers make it a relatively easy process (well, except for getting the actual words right!) But for authors in the benighted pre-computer era, revising their work was a chore: what did you do when, say, you decided that a paragraph had to be inserted into an existing manuscript page?  Well, if you were Jane (and others on her era, I presume), you wrote it down on a separate piece of paper and pinned it to the original manuscript in the spot where it was to be inserted. Between crossing out words and sentences and writing in new ones and pinning in longer additions, it’s easy to understand why an important part of preparing a manuscript was sitting down with a large stack of paper and copying the whole thing—making a “fair copy”—before sending it off to the publisher.

I’ll bet Jane would have loved Post-it notes...

Almack’s Again: The Marriage Mart

Somewhat to my be- musement, I’ve found myself writing a series of novellas set around that Regency institution, Almack’s Assembly Rooms. Modern readers can certainly understand how Almack’s was the place to be, the most exclusive of exclusive social venues, because that concept is timeless...but there’s one aspect of Almack’s we haven’t discussed before, and I thought it might be interesting to do so.

Almack’s was nicknamed ‘the Marriage Mart’ because it was the place for aristocratic young women and young men (or not so young ones) to go to look over the season’s marital prospects. It was Almack’s very exclusiveness that made it attractive for spouse-shopping: if only persons of a certain social class were allowed within its precincts, then by definition anyone there could be considered “safe” as a potential marriage partner. Watchful parents could relax, knowng that their romantically–minded daughters would not be solicited for the next dance by a shop-clerk or a nouveau-riche City merchant; men would not find their eyes and their fancies caught by an attractive but unsuitable young woman who dropped her aitches and didn’t know how to properly address a duchess or arrange seating at a dinner party.

Sounds kind of...well, cold, doesn’t it? Yes, absolutely, by modern standards of courtship and marriage. But the early 19th century was in flux as far as what marriage was all about.

Up until the rise of Romanticism in the 18th century, marriage was as much a financial transaction as it was about finding a husband or wife...and the wealthier the families, the truer this was. Families considered what other families they wanted to ally themselves with through the marriages of their sons and daughters for reasons of outright monetary gain as well as for less tangible but still enormously important assets like social, economic or political influence. You might decide that you wanted your son to marry the daughter of a family whose political support you sought for your career, or who might bring as part of her dowry land or other assets you coveted. And while you made some attempt to make sure the new couple would be compatible...well, that wasn’t necessarily the first consideration. But as the concept of marrying for companionship and love took hold, it fought for a while with the older view of marriage...and Almack’s was a prime example of that uneasy compromise.

It’s also hard sometimes for Americans to wrap their heads around just how class conscious England was (and still is, to a degree.) We’ve discussed that fact before—just how separately the different social classes lived their lives and the difficulty of moving from one class to another when it dictated everything about you, from how you moved and spoke to your education and expectations in life. Now, think of how that might come into play when looking for a husband or wife...and once again, Almack’s begins to be much more understandable, if not, by our standards, admirable. It’s not so surprising that Almack’s importance faded as class barriers became more fluid with the rise of the middle classes, and by the late 1830s, it had lost almost all its old cachet—not forgotten, but also, for many reasons, not mourned.

Launching the Captain: Rules of Courtship

While Marissa and I and millions of others were off celebrating the birth of our nation, another birth took place. My twenty-second work of romantic fiction made its debut (yes, I know, not quite the convention-shattering birth of the USA!). The Captain’s Courtship is the second book in my Everard Legacy miniseries from Love Inspired Historical. Today and Friday, I’m giving away an autographed copy. Read on to learn how you can win.

The Everard legacy miniseries focuses on three handsome cousins who set out to claim their inheritances and learn that love is their greatest reward. In the first book, Jerome, Richard, and Vaughn Everard discovered that their late uncle had kept a daughter secret, a daughter who has inherited not only his title but their vast empire of shares in sailing ships, money in the Exchange, and lands in six counties.

But inheriting the Everard legacy isn’t as easy as it may sound. Samantha’s father left a set of stipulations in his will, and unless she fulfills them, she and her cousins will lose everything their family has worked to gain. The first requirement is that Samantha be presented to the queen. And only a lady who has already been presented can sponsor her for the introduction. A shame that every lady the Everards know who might be disposed to do them a favor is decidedly out of the queen’s league.

All but one. Lady Claire Winthrop was once engaged to Captain Richard Everard, throwing him over for a wealthy viscount. Now she’s a widow with more than one secret in her past. Can Richard convince her to sponsor the mercurial Samantha? And if the two are drawn together once more, will the captain’s courtship be successful this time?

As you can tell, courtship plays a big part in this story, whether Richard and Claire’s memories of their first courtship or their attempts to find their way back into courting again. When I was writing my young adult novel, La Petite Four, I developed a character named Lord Snedley, who considered himself an expert in the rules of courting (among other things). Here are some of his rules for courting:

• On her first introduction to a gentleman, a young lady would do well to keep her eyes on his chin, unless of course he should have a pock or wart there. Raising her eyes to his will make her appear forward and staring at his feet will make the fellow uncomfortable. I also advise against staring at birthmarks or protrusions of any sort.
• Gentlemen, when you visit, stay a quarter hour, no more, no less. Unless, of course, you are pressed to stay by a particularly winsome young lady, or you find yourself enamored of the lemonade served that day, drink fourteen glasses, and must needs make use of the retiring facilities.
• Young ladies are indebted to their chaperons, those maternal sorts who hover about at balls, making sure that everything is aboveboard. Do insist that they stay away from card tables, sharp objects, and the occasional cavorting in the servant’s hall.
• Indulging in flirtation is every young lady’s prerogative and quite expected in more fashionable circles. If you feel daunted, I suggest you practice on a door knob, which will not notice if your hair was parted the wrong way nor remark that you have parsley stuck between your front teeth.

Now it’s your turn. Give me a rule of proper courtship, real, from a book you read, or imagined, in a comment to this post, and I will put your name in a drawing to win an autographed copy of The Captain’s Courtship. Comments received before midnight U.S. West Coast time on Thursday, July 12, will be eligible. I’ll announce the winner in my Friday post, where we’ll learn more about Lady Claire Winthrop, and I’ll give you another chance to win.

The Captain's Courship is available at

Harlequin Online

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Powell’s Books

Independent Bookstores near you

The Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)

Courtship and Marriage, La Belle Assemblée Style

Ah, La Belle Assemblée, that bible of style and culture read by nineteenth century girls throughout the Empire, and writers wishing to understand them. I was browsing the September 1810 issue this week. One column was labeled “Provincials, Including Remarkable Occurrences, Deaths and Marriages, &c. In the Several Counties of Great Britain,” with Great Britain meaning England, Scotland, and Ireland. There was a report of a woman in Sheerness Garrison in Kent who had given birth to 6 children in 9 months (quintuplets and twins); sadly none lived. There were several stories gruesome stage coach accidents (people trampled by horses, thrown from windows). There was even a long, grisly description of an execution of murderers in Ireland.

But what I found particularly interesting in this issue were the stories of courtship and marriage.

Sometimes, it seems, love conquers all. Take this entry: “Married: Mr. Joseph Holmes of Woodhouse to Miss M. Cooper of Hunflet, near Leeds. The bridegroom is deaf and dumb.”

Then love can work miracles. Take the case of Mr. W. Stephenson and a widow of Derbyshire. According to the magazine, “This blooming young widow had interred her former husband about twelve weeks, and was apparently inconsolable for his loss, till within a few days of her union with Mr. Stephenson, the sight of whose athletic form drove the tear of sorrow from her eye, and replaced it with the compassionate glance of love.”

And sometimes life simply isn’t fair! One story reported how the widowed Mrs. Graham brought charges of breach of promise of marriage against Mr. Hetherington. He told her father he wanted to marry her one July, but by October he still hadn’t made good on his promise. She tracked him down to a posting house and demanded to know why. He made up some lame excuse about his friends not liking her but claimed he didn’t care what they said, he was going to marry her the very next Saturday at Carlisle.

So the poor thing goes to the church, and what does Mr. Hetherington say, right at the altar, but that he’d changed his mind! She goes home, and he follows her, kneels down in front of her and her mother and “imprecated the vengeance of Heaven on himself, if he did not, on the Monday following, fulfill his promise.” So once again she gets ready for her wedding, and he disappears!

When the Court located him and called him to appear, he claimed that 1) she was pregnant and the child wasn’t his (no mention is made anywhere in the year leading up to the story of Mrs. Graham giving birth—longest pregnancy on record—NOT!), 2) she was too old for him (well, she was the same amount of old when you proposed, buddy!), and 3) because he was so young there was a good chance she’d “ensnared” him (yeah, ensnared people generally run away at the drop of a hat). The Court found for Mrs. Graham and awarded her 100 pounds (the equivalent of about $10,000 in the buying power of the U.S. dollar today).

Personally, in a time when stealing a loaf of bread was punishable by death or deportation, I wonder why the fellow wasn’t hanged! But maybe I’m too focused on how wonderful love should be. How would you have dealt with the dithering Mr. Hetherington and much-put-upon Mrs. Graham?