Happy Christmas Everyone!

 

Happy Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. 

Image: A lady in evening dress - perhaps in mourning. Ackermann's Repository, December 1818. Courtesy New York Public Library. 

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Happy Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful Christmas and New Year. 

Image from the author's collection. 

December Fashions for 1798

Lady's Monthly Museum, 1798. 

Paying morning visits was an important part of fashionable life - and it was important that a lady was properly dressed. Popular magazine The Lady's Monthly Museum included up-to-date fashions for its fair readers. The lady on the left is wearing a 'Plain White Gown' (like the ones favoured by Eleanor Tilney in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey), with a 'Cloak of Purple Velvet, hanging in a point behind, trimmed with broad Black Lace'. She is sporting a 'Black Velvet Cap' with a 'Bandeau of Pink Ribbon', with a pink handkerchief and pink shoes. For warmth, she is carrying a 'Bear [skin] Muff'. Her companion is also attired in a 'Plain Gown' with a 'Cloak of Scarlet Kerseymere, trimmed with Sables, having either a hood or cape trimmed with the same'. This lady's 'head-dress' is made from 'Purple Velvet, with Bandeau, Puffing, and Rose of Scarlet Ribbon', with matching shoes.  

Plain gowns were also popular for evening wear, with suitable embellishments. Full dress (image right) for the first figure comprised a 'Round Gown, with the Agatha Robe of Pink Muslin'. The robe had satin half-sleeves, and was fashioned on each shoulder with a cornelian clasp. The lady is wearing a coral necklace and earrings, and a turban of purple velvet trimmed with white satin and pink muslin; purple shoes to match. The lady on the right is wearing a lilac muslin half-robe over her round gown with lace tucker. Her head-dress is a lilac 'fillet' fastened under her chin, decorated with pearls.

On 18 December 1798, Jane Austen was looking forward to a ball. She wrote to her sister Cassandra, 'I took the liberty a few days ago of asking your black velvet bonnet to lend me its cawl, which it very readily did, and by which I have been enabled to give a considerable improvement of dignity to cap, which was before too nidgetty to please me. I shall wear it on Thursday, but I hope you will not be offended with me for following your advice as to its ornaments only in part. I still venture to retain the narrow silver round it, put twice round without any bow, and instead of the black military feather shall put in the coquelicot one as being smarter, and besides coquelicot is to be all the fashion this winter. After the ball I shall probably make it entirely black'.   

A very Happy Christmas to all my readers! 

A Regency Dinner Party

Lady's Monthly Museum.

My latest post on my Jane Austen blog is on planning a special dinner party!

Austen-era Fabrics

This week fellow Pen & Sword author Catherine Curzon has kindly invited me to write for her wonderful Madam Gilflurt blog on Georgian history, and you can read my post on fashionable Austen-era fabrics here.
Image: A morning dress on display at Jane Austen's home: Chawton Cottage, Hampshire. © Sue Wilkes.

The Rich Child in His Castle, the Poor Child at His Gate

What was life like for a child growing up in Georgian and Victorian times? While researching The Children History Forgot, I was struck by the vast gulf between rich and poor. Children like this smartly dressed boy and girl, born into a genteel family, were educated at home in their early years. Sons were sent to school, then university. Daughters were often educated at home, although some later went to school to learn accomplishments suitable for their future roles as wives and mothers.

Children born into poverty were expected to earn a living from as early an age as possible, like these ‘mudlarks’ scavenging along the banks of the Thames. They collected and sold bits of coal, scrap metal or rope to try to earn a few pennies. The only schools likely to be available to them were Sunday schools, or missions like this one.

Images: Fashion plates, Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, Vol. XII, 1837.

Children mudlarking on the Thames, Old and New London Vol.III, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1878).