What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

The Basics

Currency

Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?" Mr. Dombey asks his little son Paul. Paul, Dickens tells us, knew, but the average reader of today is not always likely to be so knowledgeable.

In the 1800s, British money was calculated in units of pounds, shillings, and pence. These were the units of value -- like the American mill, cent, and dollar -- in which all transactions were reckoned, regardless of whether the value was represented by a bookkeeping entry, by coin, by bank notes, or by notations written on a check. The actual physical instruments of currency were paper bank notes and gold, silver, copper, and bronze coins like the sixpence, the crown, the sovereign, the shilling piece, and the penny. Thus, for example, the physical units called pennies were used to measure the value created by an equivalent number of pence. (The guinea, uniquely, was a unit of physical currency that also became an abstract measure of value as well; that is, long after the actual guinea coin itself stopped being minted in the early 1800s, prices for luxury items like good horses and expensive clothes continued to be quoted in guineas as if it were some independent unit of value like the pound.)

Sovereigns and half sovereigns were gold; crowns, half crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences, and threepences were silver; pence, ha'pence, and farthings were copper until 1860, after which they were bronze. The coins were issued by the Royal Mint, but the bank notes got their names from the fact that they were not issued by a government agency but by a bank, in fact -- after the mid-1800s -- only by the bank -- the Bank of England. Until then banks all over the country issued their own bank notes (or promises to pay), which circulated more or less like money. Private banks in the provinces are by one estimate believed to have cranked out about 20,000,000 worth of notes between 1810 and 1815. With the Bank Charter Act of 1844, however, the

Contents

Introduction

Part One

The Basics

Currency

The Calendar

Hogsheads and Drams: English Measurement

England

London

The Public World

Precedence: Of Bishops, Barristers, and Baronets

The Titled

How to Address Your Betters

Esq., Gent., K.C.B., etc.

Status: Gentlemen and Lesser Folk

Society

Society and "The Season"

Basic Etiquette

How to Address the Nontitled

"May I Have This Dance?"

The Rules of Whist and Other Card Games

Calling Cards and Calls

The Major Rituals

Presentation at Court

The Dinner Party

The Ball

The Country House Visit

Money

Being Wealthy

Entail and Protecting the Estate

Bankruptcy, Debt, and Moneylending

Power and the Establishment

The Government

Britannia Rules the Waves

The Army

The Church of England

Oxford and Cambridge

Schools

"The Law Is a Ass"

Lawyers

Crime and Punishment

Transition

The Horse

Please, James, the Coach

The Railroad

The Mail

The Country

Life on the Farm

The Midlands, Wessex, and Yorkshire

Who's Who in the Country

Shire and Shire Alike: Local Government in Britain

"The Theory and System of Fox Hunting"

Vermin, Poachers, and Keepers

Fairs and Markets

The Private World

"Reader, I Married Him"

Sex

An Englishman's Home

Houses with Names

Furniture

Lighting

How the English Kept Clean

"Please, Sir, I Want Some More."

Pudding!

Tea

Drink and the Evils Thereof

Women's Clothing

Men's Clothing

Servants

The Governess

A Taxonomy of Maids

Victorian Recycling

The Grim World

The Orphan

Occupations

Apprentices

The Workhouse

Disease

Doctors

Death and Other Grave Matters

Part Two

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Daniel Pool received a doctorate in political science from Brandeis University and a law degree from Columbia University. He lives in New York City.

"A delightful book ... indispensable to lovers of Victorian literature." (M.G. Lord New York Newsday)