by Jo Beverley
Their meeting must have been interesting. Did she remember his insulting words? Was she annoyed that he’d ignored her for so long? However that went, they became a deeply devoted couple. He died in August 1750, aged only 49, and she died a year later of grief.
They were the parents of the famous Lennox sisters, subject of the book and television series The Aristocrats.
Extra number 2
EXTRA #2 THE IMPORTANCE OF MONEY IN THE REGENCY.
This essay was commissioned to appear in a book called Romancing Pride and Prejudice.
* * *
GOLD DIGGERS OF 18**
A Gift From Heaven, to the tune of Hey, Big Spender
Mrs. Bennet sings to Mr. Bennet:
The minute I heard about our neighbor,
I knew at once he was a gift from heaven
A rich, single man, dear.
Five thousand
And Netherfield!
He has to meet our dear daughters
Way ahead of the field.
* * *
We need you to call right away.
A chance like this just doesn’t hang on every tree!
My dear Mr. Bennet,
Please call -- for your daughters and me!
* * *
Chorus of daughters:
We’re so glad you’ve moved near.
Near, near.
Being new to the area…
(Bingley! Darcy!)
…you must want to see the country.
We can show you our… beauty spots
* * *
Mrs. Bennet:
Now that we’ve met our charming neighbour.
I’m convinced he is a man of perfection,
Ideal for sweet Jane.
Only think, dear, what comes with a ring.
He can provide for your other daughters
When you haven’t done a thing.
* * *
And then there’s Elizabeth and Darcy.
I fear the man’s too proud to ever bend the knee.
But, oh, Mr. Bennet,
Oh, Mr. Bennet,
Ten thousand and Pemberley!
* * *
Elizabeth Bennet linked with the good-time girls of the show Sweet Charity? Horrors! And of course she does stands against the guiding principle of her world by twice refusing offers of marriage from eligible men of property. However, Pride and Prejudice’s theme is stated in the famous first sentence and continues throughout. A rich, single man was like a fox to the Quorn hunt, or the cigar-smoking big spender in the night club – a natural quarry. Mrs. Bennet gets a harsh rap from modern readers because we now prefer to think that money weighs lightly in decisions of love, but in Jane Austen's age, genteel poverty was a dreadful fate, and it is what the Bennet ladies face, entirely because of the improvidence of Mr. Bennet.
For a regency gentlewoman, money was key to a bearable life. It was almost always necessary in order to marry, but marriage brought children, quite possibly a child every couple of years for twenty years. Raising them without adequate finances would be drudgery, though poverty could ease matters by killing a number of them. Educating them would be extremely difficult, and thus their prospects would be dismal, leading to yet more misery for the woman. Who would support Mother in her old age?
Remaining single was no improvement. Marriage was the Regency gentlewoman's only path to social dignity. Agnes Porter (A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen: The journals and letters of Agnes Porter ed. Joanna Martin, The Hambledon Press, 1998) had what in Regency times was an excellent career. She was governess to the children of Lord Ilchester and very well treated, in many ways like one of the family.
Even so, she longs for a husband. She buys a lottery ticket thinking of a fortunate young woman who won £1,200 and was then courted by a rich man. “...and now she rides in her own coach and proves a woman of good sense and merit.” At another time she writes: “I could not forbear ... reflecting on the ills that single women are exposed to... from being the property of no one.” (Property here is clearly used in the warmer meaning of our “belonging.”)
In 1799, the Marquess of Bute put it bluntly. “Ladies of quality without fortunes are perhaps worse off than any other class.” Though Jane Austen was not of aristocratic rank, she suffered the predicament. She probably lost her true love, Tom Lefroy, because she lacked the money he needed to establish himself in life. He married an heiress and did very well.
As Lefroy and the lottery winner illustrate, gentlemen were gold digging, too, and were not despised for it. If they had no money they needed to marry it, and a promising future in a profession or the military was considered fair exchange. If they were rich, they would think it folly not to bring yet more wealth into the family. Great wealth gives Darcy the freedom to be a fool for love, but Wickham can only be brought to marry Lydia by bribes of considerable amounts.
Wickham secures the promise of Lydia's meager dowry of £1,000, and the addition of £100 a year from her father. This is a considerable sum when a modest house could be rented for £20 a year. Mr. Bennet says that Lydia's £1,000 would bring only £50 a year, so he's assuming a 5% return on investment. Using that figure, the fortunate lottery winner above did not bring as much as Lydia; her £1,200 invested would be unlikely to produce more than £60 a year. £100 per annum would, therefore, equal an additional dowry of £2,000 or more invested.
In addition, Darcy pays Wickham's debts and buys him a commission in the regular army, which would cost between £500 and £1,500, depending on regiment and other details. Contrast that, however, with what Wickham lost with Darcy's sister -- a very handsome £30,000, which could translate to £1,500 a year and comfort.
It's very difficult to relate these figures to modern values because it was such a different world. Labor was cheap, so a maid-of-all-work could be hired for £10 a year plus room and board. Contrast that with the mere tax on keeping a four wheeled carriage and two horses to pull it -- £30. Add in a coachman and a groom for about £40, and keeping a modest carriage would cost seven times the price of one overworked housekeeper.
If the employers took that carriage on a journey and stayed at an inn, their bill for room and meals, without considering the care of their carriage, horses, coachman, and groom, would probably exceed £2. No one today could hire a live-in housekeeper for five times the cost of a night in a good hotel. On the other hand, most people now run a car (note, the above figures are only for maintaining the horses and carriage, not purchase) without thinking they can afford a servant, except possibly an occasional cleaning service. But then, appliances and pre-made goods are our cheap servants today.
We have to remember, too, that in Regency times, people at different levels of society had vastly different requirements for a “decent life.” But then, perhaps it's not so different to today, when some need the food bank at the end of the month while others pay $1,000 for a handbag; or where some will pay for meal at a restaurant an amount that could keep a family for a year in a third world country. ($300 in Burkina Faso.)
This way of looking at things might clarify why money was so important to the gentry in Regency England. A lower income did not merely mean a little economy. It brought danger of sliding to an entirely different level of life.
Jane Austen is unusually specific about money in Pride and Prejudice, proving that it is the theme of the novel. I can find no period slang for the concept of the gold-digger, almost certainly because it was considered a normal state of affairs to want to marry wealth.
To understand why snagging a rich spouse was so important, we have to understand the financial realities of Jane Austen’s time.
Entail was a common way of preserving the integrity of estates. The property inheritor had only a life interest in it. He had free use of the income, but could not sell or mortgage the property, and it passed on according to the terms of the entail, almost always to the next male in line. Because the Bennets have no son, Longbourn is entailed on Mr. Collins. As soon as Mr.
Bennet dies, Mrs. Bennet and her daughters will lose both access to the estate income and their home. Like the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility they face a penny-pinching life in a cottage, or employment that will never offer them the dignity that in their circles comes only from marriage.
Jane Austen comments on the unfairness of this through Lady Catherine de Bourgh. “I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line.” I don't think either Lady Catherine or Austen would have questioned the right of sons to inherit before daughters, but for a property to bypass a man's children entirely is another matter.
Given the legal settlement governing Longbourn, however, the Bennet women's situation could have been improved if Mr. Bennet hadn't been a foolish, selfish, improvident man. Firstly, instead of gold-digging, he chose to marry a pretty girl with no money. His plan to cover this was to have a son. When his son came of age they could together break the entail and any daughters would be provided for by depleting the estate. If the daughters didn't marry, they would still have their home and their brother's support. It was a foolish plan to begin with, but when that son didn't appear, he should have cut current spending to put aside money for his widow and daughters. That, however, would have affected his comfort.
When Mr. Bennet made his foolish marriage he couldn't have foreseen the demographic and economic changes that arrived in the early 19th century. In earlier times a bevy of well-bred gentlewomen would have had a reasonable chance of making satisfactory marriages with well-bred gentlemen neighbors of modest but adequate means, but by the early nineteenth century, things had changed.
The supply of young gentlemen available for marriage was reduced by an ongoing war. When it didn’t kill or maim the men it kept a lot of them out of England.
It has been estimated that the male population of Britain between 15 and 60 in 1812-14 was 2,700,000. More than 10%, around 330,000, were under arms, not counting the navy. (The Armies of Wellington, Philip J. Hawthornthwaite, Brockhampton Press.) The percentage in prime eligibility years – 25-40 – must have been much higher. Moreover, in an age where officers led their men into battle, casualties among officers were much higher than among the ranks.
At the same time, many gentlemen at home were reluctant to marry, especially women who brought little income. Why? Because life expectancy was increasing. This period saw a decrease in infant mortality, especially in the upper classes, and an increase in longevity, especially among women. This might seem like a blessing, but it put many upper class families in a predicament.
A system had been devised for property stability. The key element was male primogeniture by which the oldest son inherited the whole estate, usually under the strict controls of an entail. The other children were taken care of through a marriage settlement. It specified income for the wife, pin money, and for her widowhood, jointure. Once the settlement was signed these were her legal right, not subject to the whim of her husband. The settlement also usually included an amount put in trust for the younger children of the marriage, to be divided into equal portions – dowries for the girls, starter money for the boys.
However, preservation of the estate was still the intent so while a husband was expected to support his wife and children from his income during his life, the demands upon the estate after his death – the jointure and portions – were based on what the bride brought into it. Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility) brought little as dowry and thus they and their children could take little out.
Mrs. Bennet and her daughters are expected to live on the interest of £5,000. (About £250 a year.) If any of the girls married, her portion must come out of the capital, leaving less income for the rest. If a woman did not marry, she was expected to live on the interest generated by her portion. If Elizabeth Bennet was left a spinster trying to survive alone on the interest of her £1,000, £50 a year would provide only the bare necessities.
Because the amount set aside for the children was usually a fixed sum, large families meant inadequate portions. In this situation, wiser fathers than Mr. Bennet put money aside to increase the portions, and sons often gave over their share to their sisters. One route for these sons was the navy, which required little outlay and provided opportunity for advancement and wealth. This was the course taken by two of Jane Austen's brothers.
Longevity was creating another problem. Many estates were carrying the burden of long-lived widows, and maybe more than one. Consider the fix of the young man who inherited an estate with multiple jointure obligations. His fifty-five year old mother is entitled to five hundred a year for life and could easily live for another thirty years. Eighty-year-old granny is still alive and due another five hundred a year. If this were rich Mr. Bingley, a fifth of his £5,000 per annum must go to the widows, and it could be that way for most of his life.
Many upper class men were land rich (entailed, remember) but had incomes of only a few thousand. It is hardly surprising if some seem to have decided not to risk adding another widow for a generation, especially as their “Regency buck” lifestyle, especially fox hunting, made the bachelor life appealing.
Fox hunting? Horses were the Regency man's passion, and fox hunting with its long, dangerous runs, the favorite activity of many. Various factors led to the expansion of fox hunting in the Shires in the late eighteenth century, but by the Regency, many young men (such as Chart and his friends) took up residence around Melton Mowbray from November to March, turning the place into the best men's club around. Marriage generally meant an end of that as a wife and family couldn't be abandoned for that length of time and weren't welcome there.
This didn't of course, mean doing without sex. “Cyprians” were acceptable in Melton, and some even rode to the hunt. In all places, the Regency buck had easy access to sex, and if he preferred a type of monogamy, he could set up house with a mistress without any of the legal and financial complexities of marriage. Why enter "parson's mousetrap"?
Jane Austen lived and wrote in a time when eligible husbands were in short supply, spinster gentlewomen had little status, and spinster gentlewomen with small portions had faint hope of marriage. It's hardly surprising if that predicament permeates her work. Perhaps only her contemporaries could truly appreciate the breathless hopes of the ladies of Longbourn when two single, wealthy men appeared among them, but if she didn't describe the Bennet ladies as gold diggers, it's only because hunting down that “gift from heaven, a rich, single man, dear” was a natural part of her world.
* * *
Here's an extra little bit about Jane Austen and money.
This young woman didn’t experience great events, or suffer through cataclysmic disasters. She loved her family, who didn’t abandon or abuse her. She enjoyed her neighbors and friends, who as far as we know didn’t engage in strange sexual practices in the woods. She didn’t rage about the things her world said she could not or should not do.
True, she was devastated when her father’s retirement moved the family away from her home. She fell in love at least once with a young man who flirted but then left. Her sister’s beloved fiancé died of fever when working overseas, trying to earn the money to allow them to wed. These are all painful events, but of the sort that make up an ordinary life.
This ordinary young woman, however, was the extraordinary Jane Austen, who nearly two hundred years ago used the raw materials of her ordinary life into five enduring novels. Her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, has never been out of print and is now high on the bestselling lists again, and two major motion pictures based on her work have been blockbusters. Go, Jane!
Would that she was here to enjoy it. She's sometimes portrayed as modest and retiring, but she wasn't. She was witty and sometimes trenchant in her letters. She wrote in quiet moments, hiding her pages from her family, presumably because they pushed her to do so.
She certainly enjoyed her success when it came. She wrote to her brother, “I have now, therefore, written myself into £250, which only makes me long for more.�
�� A year later she wrote to her niece, “I like praise as much as anybody, but I like (money) too.”
This was not greed but practicality. She knew first hand the stress of poverty. “Single women,” she wrote in a letter, “have a dreadful propensity for being poor.”
Her lifetime earnings were £680, a significant sum but not an independence, as they called a decent income, never mind wealth. What a shame she didn’t live to see greater success and write more books, which could well have moved her into that realm of an independence. What would she have done with it? My feeling is that she would have explored her world.
Though she didn't like living in Bath, she enjoyed her visits to London. She might have toured the picturesque parts of England, as Elizabeth Bennet did with her aunt and uncle, or even have traveled abroad. I mourn that life on her behalf, but I hope she's dancing in heaven to see the brilliant success of her quietly penned works.
I hope you've enjoyed these Valentine's Day stories and the extra tid-bits I've included. Best wishes, and happy reading always,
* * *
Jo
About the Author
Jo Beverley is the bestselling author of over forty romance novels and novellas, mostly historical. She is a five time winner of the RITA award and a member of the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame for Regency romance.
@JoBeverley
Jo.Beverley
www.jobev.com
Also by Jo Beverley
A Shocking Delight
Too Dangerous for a Lady
An Arranged Marriage
