Jane Austen's Christmas E-Book

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Literary Christmas
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 191

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

'I wish you a Merry Xmas but no compliments of the season' – Jane Austen Christmas comes up time and time again in Jane Austen's books, from childish chaos in Persuasion to fraught festivities in Northanger Abbey. Join Christmas historian Maria Hubert on a delightful meander through Georgian Christmases both fact and fiction. Eavesdrop on Austen family letters, immerse yourself in prose, drama and poetry from Jane and her contemporaries, or use the recipes to cook exemplary vegetables for your own Regency Christmas – Jane Austen's Christmas is essential reading for an Austenite's long winter nights.

Leseprobe

First published 1996

This revised and updated edition first published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, gl50 3qb

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© The Estate of the late Maria Hubert, 1996, 2003, 2009, 2023

The right of The Estate of the late Maria Hubert to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 577 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHRISTMAS AT MANSFIELD PARK

Jane Austen

COUSIN ELIZA’S CHRISTMAS GAIETIES

Letter from Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide

A PIANOFORTE FOR CHRISTMAS

Letter from Mrs Austen

UNFASHIONABLY PRUDISH

A Mystery for Christmas

A ST NICHOLAS VERSE

Jane Austen

BRITANNIA’S HOUSEWIVES BLITHE

Romaine Joseph Thorne

CHARADES FOR CHRISTMAS

LADY SUSAN SPOILS CHRISTMAS

Jane Austen

SOME GEORGIAN CHRISTMAS RECIPES

A POEM FOR CHRISTMAS DAY 1795

Robert Southey

DANCES AND CHARITIES

Letter from Jane Austen

MUSLIN FOR A NEW GOWN

THANKFULNESS AND SAUCE

Revd William Holland

THE FESTIVE BOARD

THE TURKEY STAGE

Peter Parley

THE INVALIDS’ CHRISTMAS

Revd William Holland

GEORGIAN CHRISTMAS PUDDINGS

A PARLOUR THEATRICAL

Jane Austen

THE COLD IN THIS COUNTRY IS INTENSE …

Robert Southey

BULLET PUDDING AND MESSY GAMES

Letters from Fanny Austen

THE PARSON AT WORK AND PLAY

Revd William Holland

GAIETIES AND MASQUES

AT GODMERSHAM PARK, 1806

Letter from Fanny Austen

THE RELIGION OF PLUMCAKE

Robert Southey

A CHRISTMAS BABY

Letter from Charles Austen

MISTLETOE: A CHARADE IN THREE ACTS

STRONG BEER AND A PARCEL FROM LONDON

Revd William Holland

CHRISTMAS AT GODMERSHAM PARK, 1808–09

Letters from Fanny Austen

from THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON

Washington Irving

WINTER BALLS AND FESTIVE SOUPS

MORE BALLS AND FASHIONS

Letters from Jane Austen

THE MISTLETOE BOUGH

Thomas Bayly

CHRISTMAS AT GODMERSHAM PARK, 1811–12

Letter from Fanny Austen

EMMA’S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

CHRISTMAS AT TREDEGAR HOUSE

TWELFTH NIGHT FESTIVITIES

EMMA’S CHRISTMAS

PARSON HOLLAND’S LAST CHRISTMAS

Revd William Holland

TWO ADAPTED GEORGIAN RECIPES

CHRISTMAS AT UPPERCROSS

Jane Austen

THE MUSGROVES’ CHRISTMAS

Jane Austen

IN OLDEN TIMES

Sir Walter Scott

A LITERARY CHRISTMAS DINNER

Benjamin Robert Haydon

OH NOISESOME BELLS!

Revd Robert Skinner

NEW YEAR WISHES FROM A GOOD AUNT

Letter from Jane Austen

DECEMBER

John Clare

CHRISTMAS GOES OUT IN FINE STYLE

James Henry Leigh Hunt

CHRISTMAS WITH MR DARCY

Jane Austen

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ANSWERS TO CHARADES

Introduction

Reality and Expectation:Jane Austen’s Christmas Experience

Courtesy of the TV series and films Bridgerton, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility, we are transported to a time, some 200 years ago, where lavishness, delicacy and romance seem to be commonplace against a background of candles, jewels and feathers.

But where are the Christmas trees? We know that Queen Charlotte and her immediate entourage had brought the custom over from Germany.

The truth is that Jane and her family were quite a bit lower down the pecking order in a highly stratified society. Even the fabled Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice would not have seen Queen Charlotte’s Christmas tree, as recorded by her biographer Dr John Watkin:

Sixty poor families had a substantial dinner given them and in the evening the children of the principal families in the neighbourhood were invited to an entertainment at the Lodge. Here, among other amusing objects for the gratification of the juvenile visitors, in the middle of the room stood an immense tub with a yew tree placed in it, from the branches of which hung bunches of sweetmeats, almonds and raisins in papers, fruits and toys most tastefully arranged and the whole illuminated by small wax candles. After the company had walked round and admired the tree, each child obtained a portion of the sweets which it bore together with a toy, and then all returned home quite delighted.

Likewise, Jane would only have been exposed to the distinctly plain Georgian Christmas Day services, with none of the midnight pomp, incense or lavish nativity scenes common throughout southern Europe at that time. The Napoleonic Wars, if anything, encouraged a sense of inviolable English superiority; the more Anglo Catholic and High Church ‘bells and smells’ of the Oxford Movement still lay a few decades in the future.

As we see, particularly in Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins feels he has gained a degree of entitlement, courtesy of the living from his patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Any proper young lady of modest expectations would have been glad to bag a clergyman with a living backed by a wealthy landowner, and Jane gives full rein to that expectation, yet holds back on any genuine enthusiasm on the part of Elizabeth Bennet. Becoming a clergyman was a comfortable option for those with no wealth or property behind them. Jane, as a consequence, glosses over any detail of the Christmas liturgy.

It was not uncommon from mid Georgian times for the wealthy family to go to a parish church and be seen by the local gentry, while the servants and tenants went to a local evangelist chapel, if one were available. Methodism, with its stripped-down ceremonies, had really taken root by Austen’s time.

Repairing back to the house for a family Christmas dinner would have been the main event, and some of the recipes from her friend Martha Lloyd would certainly have been employed, including a family favourite, White Soup (see page 48).

A note: recipes found at various junctures in this volume have been adapted, as to follow the originals slavishly would (in all probability) be very unpalatable to modern tastes and sensitivities. So please bear this in mind and forgive the occasional adaptations of the many extant examples of Georgian cuisine. Much of what was passed down, even in recipe books such as The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (published in 1747 and reprinted many times throughout Jane Austen’s life), relied a great deal on the cook having served something of an apprenticeship in the kitchen.

Even these modern adaptations will give an authentic feel to the flavours enjoyed by the Austen family. Perhaps you, too, will be tempted to sit back, then attempt the hilarious consequences of Bullet Pudding!

Messy games aside, propriety and manners were everything for any Christmas party, which could have taken place at any time from 6 December through to Twelfth Night. The parties were times of get together and gossip. Any controversies were to be avoided, propriety was everything, as demonstrated by a letter from Queen Charlotte to her son, the Prince of Wales, advising against visiting his brother, the Duke of Clarence, who’d been living with his mistress, the actress Mrs Jordan:

But in your sex and under the present Melancholy situation of your father the going to Public Amusements except where Duty calls you would be the highest mark of indecency possible. The visits to your brothers I will no further touch upon than to say that you can never be in the House with those that are unmarried without a Lady, and that even that Pleasure, innocent as it is, should be well considered before it is done …

As it happened, William, Duke of Clarence, under considerable pressure to find a ‘suitable’ wife, had just separated from Mrs Jordan, who had been anticipating a happier outcome the Christmas before:

My two beloved boys are now at home … we shall have a full and merry house at Christmas: ‘tis what the dear Duke delights in:- a happier set when altogether I believe never existed.

The poor soul had no idea what was lying in wait for her.

Unlike Jane’s heroines, partying was not in prospect for the Prince of Wales’ sisters. Princess Sophia wrote in December 1811 to her brother from Windsor Castle, which she referred to as ‘The Nunnery’ and lived in a state of near seclusion with her sisters, including herself as ‘Four old Cats’:

How good you are to us however imperfectly expressed I feel most deeply Poor old wretches as we are, a dead weight upon you old lumber to the country like old clothes. I wonder you don’t vote for putting us in a sack and drowning us in the Thames …

She finishes the letter, ‘Ever your unalterably attached Sophy.’

Jane Austen wrote of what she knew, essentially a wealthy middle class. Her Christmases reflect this, avoiding speculation about the excesses, scandals and controversies of court life with its German customs – and through the Prince Regent’s unapproved marriage to the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert – any hint of Popish practices.

There was a fascination with all things royal, not all of them meeting with undiluted approval, which is not so different from what we see today with the many, sometimes contradictory, stories surrounding the wider royal family. Perhaps, as Napoleon might have said: ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’ All English families, the Austens being no exception, were both appalled and fascinated by the French emperor. Anything he may or may not have said was soon passed into the vernacular as, despite the recent horrors of the French Revolution, French was still regarded as the language of sophistication and learning, aided no doubt by the presence of so many French aristocrats living in English exile. Royalty was expected to behave, the fear of republicanism was real, yet Christmas was, in some way, a reaffirmation that all was well in Jane Austen’s England.

At first sight, life seems very different. Yet, at all levels, there were so many parallels with our twenty-first-century Christmas. Families got together and, as you will see from Jane’s letters, there was genuine sadness that others were stranded on the other side of the world, unable to get back for Christmas. Family fun, goodwill and reconciliation were as familiar then as they are now.

Humanity changes very little, for all the trappings of modern communication and convenience. Everyone wanted a cheerful and happy Christmas. When it was all over there was the mixture of regret after the guests had gone and at the same time a feeling of relief. Not at all different from what any family today would feel once the decorations had come down and life returns to the grey normality of winter.

This book is an authentic festive romp through the ages, which leaps into a particular corner of Jane Austen’s world, where we hear from members of the Austen family and read Jane’s own words, meet the likes of the Revd William Holland (the parson whose diary is a fascinating insight into Georgian daily life), and explore the rituals and festivities that Jane and people like her enjoyed at Christmas.

Note those similarities, enjoy those human touches from the pen of Jane Austen during her all too brief life and together let’s step into the Christmas of Jane Austen’s time.

Christmas at Mansfield Park

JANE AUSTEN

Set at the home of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, Mansfield Park, and spanning several Christmas seasons, the gentle romantic comedy of that name gives tantalizing glimpses of a Christmas we are never quite a party to. Would that Miss Austen had seen it fit to describe the ‘Christmas Gaieties’ which Miss Crawford refers to in a one-liner, when she asks Fanny about a letter received: ‘Was his letter a long one? – Does he give you much account of what he is doing? – Is it the Christmas Gaieties that he is staying for?’ The ‘He’ is, of course Fanny’s cousin, Edmund, who, intent on his own life, is no longer joining the seasonal family gathering when young Fanny Price visits Mansfield Park; but as with all good romances, she wins her man in the end despite the apparent lack of Christmas spirit!

Amid the cares and complacency which his own children suggested, Sir Thomas did not forget to do what he could for the children of Mrs Price; he assisted her liberally in the education and disposal of her sons as they became old enough for a determinate pursuit: and Fanny, though almost totally separated from her family was sensible of the truest satisfaction in hearing any kindness towards them, or of anything at all promising in their situation and conduct. Once and only once in the course of many years, had she the happiness of being with William. Of the rest she saw nothing; nobody seemed to think of her ever going amongst them again, even for a visit, nobody at home seemed to want her; but William determining, soon after her removal, to be a sailor, was invited to spend a week with his sister in Northamptonshire, before he went to sea. Their eager affection in meeting, their exquisite delight in being together, their hours of happy mirth, and moments of serious conference, may be imagined; as well as the sanguine views and spirits of the boy even to the last, and the misery of the girl when he left her. Luckily the visit happened over the Christmas holidays, when she could directly look for comfort to her cousin Edmund; and he told her such charming things of what William was to do, and be hereafter, in consequence of his profession, as made her gradually admit that the separation might have some use. Edmund’s friendship never failed her … she loved him better than anybody in the world except William; her heart was divided between the two.

Some time later, when Fanny is 15 years old, she is with Sir Thomas’s family hoping for the promised return of her brother after some six years.

The winter came … the accounts continued perfectly good; – and Mrs Norris in promoting gaieties for her nieces, assisting their toilettes, displaying their accomplishments, and looking about for their future husbands, had so much to do as, in addition to her own household cares, some interference in those of her sister, and Mrs Grant’s wasteful doings to overlook, left her very little occasion to be occupied even in fears for the absent … Fanny had no share in the festivities of the season; but she enjoyed being avowedly useful as her aunt’s companion, when they called away the rest of the family; and as Miss Leigh had left Mansfield, she naturally became everything to Lady Bertram during the night of a Ball or a Party … As to her cousin’s gaieties, she loved to hear an account of them, especially of the balls, and whom Edmund had danced with; but though too lowly of her own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same, and listened therefore without an idea of any nearer concern in them. Upon the whole it was a comfortable winter to her; for though it brought no William to England, the never failing hope of his arrival was worth much.

The next Christmas event sees not only beloved brother William home, but Fanny preparing to go to the ball.

William’s desire to see Fanny dance made more than a momentary impression on his uncle …

‘I do not like, William, that you should leave Northampton without this indulgence. It would give me pleasure to see you both dance. You spoke of the balls at Northampton. Your cousins have occasionally attended them but they would not altogether suit us now. The fatigue would be too much for your aunt. I believe we must not think of a Northampton ball, a dance at home would be more eligible, and if — —’

‘Ah! My dear Sir Thomas,’ interrupted Mrs Norris, ‘I knew what was coming. I knew what you were going to say. If dear Julia were at home, or dearest Mrs Rushworth at Sotherton, to afford a reason, an occasion for such a thing, you would be tempted to give the young people a dance at Mansfield. I know you would. If they were at home to grace a ball, a ball you would have this very Christmas. Thank your uncle, William, thank your uncle.’ …

The ball began. It was rather honour than happiness to Fanny, for the first dance at least; her partner was in excellent spirits and tried to impart them to her, but she was a great deal too much frightened to have any enjoyment, til she could suppose herself no longer looked at. Young, pretty, and gentle, however she had no awkwardnesses that were not as good as graces, and there were few persons present that were not disposed to praise her …

Shortly afterwards, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. ‘Advise’ was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise and, with Mr Crawford’s very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, ‘one moment and no more’, to view the happy scene, and take a last look at the five or six determined couples, who were still hard at work – and then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sorefooted and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful …

Cousin Eliza’s Christmas Gaieties

Elizabeth Hancock was the daughter of Tysoe and Philadelphia, her mother being Jane Austen’s aunt. She married a French count, Jean Capotte, from whom she gained the title of Madame Comtesse de Feuillide. Jean was guillotined in 1794, and Eliza later married one of Jane’s brothers, Henry, with whom she had long flirted.

The following is a letter from the early days of Eliza’s marriage to the Count de Feuillide, written to her cousin Philadelphia Walter, the Walters being half-cousins on Jane’s maternal side. ‘Philly’ had written several letters, including her Christmas letter telling about her attendance at a ball, but none seemed to arrive in France. Eliza was obviously so taken up with the combined social events of the birth of a new baby for the King and Queen and the festive social scene that it was March (1782) before she wrote, but she describes the winter’s festive season balls and fashions very well.

Elizabeth de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter, Paris, 27 March 1782

I should never have the courage to address my dear cousin Philly, if I had not the greatest confidence in her friendship, and the greatest desire to convince her that I have never ceased to think of her with real affection; I am nevertheless not altogether so blameable as I may appear to be, as I did not receive your letter till long after its date owing to the neglect of servants, and my being out of town. As to the two former epistles you mention they never came to my hands; I imagine a letter I wrote you a short time before my marriage must likewise have been lost, as you speak of not having heard from me for above a twelvemonth; this would imply a neglect which I can never be guilty of where you are concerned, for be assured my dear cousin, you can have no friend more sincerely attached to you than myself and neither time nor absence can affect the regard I have ever felt for you.

The accounts which your letter brought me of the health and welfare of you and yours gave me infinite pleasure … I doubt not that you will wish I should give you some account of myself. My Uncle Austen acquainted you with my marriage soon after its taking place. This event, the most important one of my life, was you may imagine the effect of a mature deliberation … The man to whom I have given my hand is in every way amiable both in mind and person. It is too little to say he loves me, since he literally adores me; entirely devoted to me, and making my inclinations the guide of all his actions.

I enjoy … the advantages of rank and title, and a numerous and brilliant acquaintance …

In your last you gave me a description of a ball you had been at, I suppose you have been to more than one since. It is an amusement you seem to be fond of, and I doubt not but you have reason to be so, as I daresay you never go into publick without being distinguished. You mention your desire of being well dressed. It is a very natural one and usual to young persons as I know by experience. I have since my marriage endeavoured to find out some pretty silk which I might send you for a gown, as I have long wished to give my dearest Cousin this small mark of my regard but the not knowing exactly your taste and the great difficulty and risk of sending unmade silk has at last induced me to beg you to accept a draft on Mr Hoare, Mamma’s Banker and which she will put into my letter in its stead. You may in this manner make purchase of what is most agreeable to you. I hope my dear Philly will not be offended at this freedom …