BBC Recreates the Netherfield Ball

To celebrate the bicentennial of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, BBC decided to recreate one of the pivotal moments in the book, the Netherfield ball. The ball, held by Mr. Bingley, becomes the venue for our Lizzy Bennet's many embarrassments and misunderstandings.

Every savage can dance. Source: BBC News

The hour and a half Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball documentary with Amanda Vickery and Alastair Sooke is a wonderfully detailed recreation of the food, fashions, manners and dances of the Regency. While a lot of this is not ground breaking material,  for anyone who wants a crash-course in Regency fine living or looking to understand the nuances of Jane Austen's writing, this program is the perfect place to start.    

Food 
The food at a 1813 ball would have been highly ornate and grand. But to our modern sensibilities it would have also looked slightly disgusting. My favorite weird food was the whole chicken with legs and head, beak and all, still in place and a jello with about six little crayfish inside.

Whole chicken was quite a delicacy. Source: BBC News 

Fashion     
Regency fashion, unlike our contemporary duds, was not mass produced. Most dresses were made at home or with the help of a seamstress. That would have meant that at a ball one would see a much broader range of fabrics, patterns, flounces and styles than one could possibly find at any modern party. The individual style of the wearer would be that much more visible. And so good or bad taste would be that much more important.

All  dressed up and ready to party. Source: BBC News

Lighting 
Fun fact about candles during the time is that they were sold by length. There were four hour or six hour candles. So just by looking at the candles the guests would know how long the party was going to last. The rich could afford beeswax candles that gave off more light, while the poor had to be content with tallow candles that were made of animal fat and smelled foul.

Beeswax candles - a real status symbol. Source: BBC News

Dance 
Balls in period films often look like stately affairs, with lots of slow, pristine gliding around the rooms. But most English country dances actually involved a lot of complicated steps and quite a bit of jumping and prancing that would leave even modern professional dancers slightly out of breath. What's more, some dances were so complicated that special paper fans were available with little cheat-sheets on the back, that showed the music and the steps that one had to follow.

Are they feeling warm or trying to memorize dance steps? Source: BBC News 

You can watch the the whole documentary here. Or visit the BBC website for more fun facts and mini-documentaries.

Change of Abode and History of the Home

My absence from this blog was occasioned by some unfortunate developments. One of which was the announcement of our landlady that she would like to see us go within the next five months. The unpleasant prospect of becoming homeless has prompted my flatmate and I to look for a new place. We suddenly realized that we have very different priorities when it comes to different rooms in the house.

While we had no extraordinary expectations for our bedrooms, it turned out that she is very particular about the kitchen and I am more interested in the bathroom. She loves cooking, so naturally, she wants a bright spacious kitchen with lots of work spaces. And I, after a long day, like to luxuriate in a bubble bath, so a clean, pretty bathroom with a bathtub is a must.

This made me think of a wonderful BBC series by Dr. Lucy Worsley - History of the Home. In it she tells about the different rooms in our modern house and how they came to be. It's a really great series with all sorts of interesting titbits and trivia. And it's very enjoyable watching her try out old-timey appliances, sleeping arrangements and labor-saving devices. Many things we take for granted are very recent additions and what we consider a necessity today was in the past viewed as a needless extravagance and vice versa.

Here's the story of The Bathroom:



And here is the history of The Kitchen


You can find the entire series here.
More about the series on the BBC website 

Lucy Worsley Talks Regency Politics

The third and last part of Elegance and Decadence presented by Lucy Worsley is about the highs and the lows of the political and social environment of the Regency. It was a time of great technological breakthroughs (the steam engine) and, at the same time, an age of great social injustice (land enclosure).



As I watched this last part of the series about an era that is so often associated with elegance, cottages and Jane Austen, I thought how little things have change. Here we have a world trying to come to terms with mindboggling technological advancement; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer; some people inciting violence, others trying to bring about peaceful reform. It's not all that different from our own age, really.

Lucy Worsley Talks Regency Brand

Elegance and Decadence series continues with Dr Lucy Worsley's take on Developing the Regency Brand. Regency was a time of great change, both politically and aesthetically. And I just love her way of narrating. She seems so psyched about all of this.

Lucy Worsley Talks Regency Era

BBC never stops wowing us with wonderfully informative and beautifully done productions. Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency is a three part series presented by Dr Lucy Worsley. The first episode is dedicated to the man himself - Prince Regent, warts and all.

Dr Worsley is also the author of If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, a book I'm dying to get my hands on.