Stones and dust hardly seem the things of romance. And yet the behaviour of these particular stones and this special "dust" is frequently used as a metaphor for the power of romantic attraction. However, that may not be immediately obvious to those of us living in the twenty-first century, because these are the names which would have been used in the Regency for naturally occuring elements. Today's romance authors tend to use the modern-day names for similar, but man-made, versions of these objects.
Of lodestones and smith's dust ...
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"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favor me with your company."
Lady Catherine de Bourgh to Elizabeth Bennet
from Chapter LVI
of
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
There are those who believe that Lady Catherine was yet again being condescending when she referred to the "wilderness" at one side of the lawn at Longbourn. But in actual fact, her condescension was in the use of the word "little" and the implication that the Bennet's lawn was not as grand as her own estate at Rosings.
The enclosed wilderness at Mr. Rushworth's estate of Sotherton Court is a point of discussion and the setting for some interesting interchanges between various characters in Chapters IX and X of
Mansfield Park. The author of both these novels,
Jane Austen, was well aware that a garden wilderness was not open country when she wrote these novels. She knew that a wilderness was a common feature of many of the larger English gardens during the Regency, just as it had been for at least a century prior to the publication of her books.
Many of these garden wildernesses were related to the evolution of the garden maze. For that reason, this article takes its place as another in my series on
mazes. And now, a wilderness adventure ...
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Coursing was a field sport popular with many gentlemen during the Regency, though it is not often mentioned in novels set during that time. And when it is part of the story, the details noted are often incorrect. The practices and rules of coursing have changed over the years, such that those which obtained during the Regency were not the same as those observed at other times in the history of the sport.
A bit of coursing history, with details on how it was practised in England during the years of the Regency ...
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In recent months I have embarked upon a series of articles here about both the
London Panorama and various aspects of
paper-hangings. In the French scenic papers these two topics intersect. Though Robert Barker's London Panorama pre-dates by more than a decade the scenic papers produced with such style in France, they share the same antecedents. And Mr. Barker's name for his unique invention supplied the alternate adjective for these elegant paper-hangings, as they also came to be known as "panoramic" papers.
A little history about how the outside came inside the English home ...
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