So, if you watch Pride and Prejudice,
then you're probably familiar with Mr. Darcy, the fact that he is super
rich and has a really cool house and Elizabeth marries into money... or does she? Exactly how rich is Mr. Darcy? Is he super, super rich? Just kind of rich. Okay.
Maybe not that rich. He's good for maybe the middle
class, but compared to those super wealthy he's not that great? Let me know in the comments
down below what you imagine, Mr. Darcy's social standing to
be in Pride and Prejudice. Because what we're going to
be doing today is putting Mr. Darcy into context. We're going to see exactly
where financially he stood compared to his peers. And try to answer this question,
I feel like a lot of people have of exactly how good of a catch
financially Darcy really was. So my name is Ellie Dashwood
and this is my channel. We were talking about literature. History and apparently how much money Mr. Darcy has in life. And if you want to learn more about any of
those things, then definitely subscribe. So in today's video, I'm not going to be
doing that thing where I adjust Darcy's income from Regency times to today and be
like, "Oh, he's worth this many millions." Because really my opinion
is that doesn't work. And the main reason being that
the way their entire economy and world was structured is
completely different from today. So we can only understand it within
context of their own time, because it simply does not translate well. Like the way we live is so
different from the way they live. So today we are going to
really be focusing on how Mr. Darcy would have appeared had he been
a real person within the financial structure of Regency England. And really we're going
to be looking at Mr. Darcy's wealth by analyzing a
couple of quotes from characters who often get dismissed. In particular, Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins. I feel like a lot of people, usually
think, "Oh, they're both silly characters who kind of over-exaggerate stuff a lot." But the thing that's super fascinated
me while researching this was how much insight these two characters
have when it comes to money. And the more I thought about that, the
more I realized, yeah, that makes sense. They're both kind of obsessed with money. I suppose they would
understand how it works. I mean, at least they do
in these selected quotes. I'm sure they say other silly or
exaggerated things in life, but in these quotes they are dead on. And I think that's super interesting. So first up, let's say look at what Mrs. Bennet has to say about Mr. Darcy. And this quote is coming from right
after Elizabeth gets engaged to Mr. Darcy. She's worried to tell her mother,
about how her mother will react. She tells her, and this is one of the
things her mother says in reacting. Mrs. Bennet says: "My dearest
child," she cried. "I can think of nothing else. 10,000 a year, and very likely more. 'Tis as good as a Lord. And a special license. You must and shall be
married by a special license. But my dearest love,
tell me what dish, Mr. Darcy's particularly fond of
that I may have it tomorrow." Okay, so much going on in this
quote, let's break it down. First up, 10,000 a year,
and very likely more. If you've seen my video on, "Does
Darcy really have 10,000 a year?" Then you know, that she's 100% correct? Because of several different factors. Mr. Darcy does have very, very
likely more than 10,000 a year. So already Mrs. Bennet knows what she's talking about. Second thing she says is
"'Tis as good as a Lord." Which I really want to go
into this topic for a second. So every once in a while I feel like
someone says like, "Oh, well, Mr. Darcy must not be that rich. Otherwise he would be a
lord of some sort, right? He would be a Duke or
an Earl or a viscount." And of course, if you want to learn
more about what an English Lord is, then definitely check out my
video "What is an English lord?" But what's really fascinating
about this is that, again, Mrs. Bennet knows what she's talking about. In 1803, the average annual income
of an English Lord was 8,000 pounds. That's correct. On average, 8,000 pounds was the
annual income of an English Lord. So how much would Darcy be making
in 1803 then for comparison? Well, assuming the 1811 slash 1806
timeline that we talk about in that video on Darcy's 10,000 pounds. If I deflate it down to 1803, Mr. Darcy would be earning
at least 9,000 pounds. So here we have the Lords' average of
8,000 pounds versus Darcy's 9,000 pounds. And remember it's 9,000 pounds plus
because that is just one aspect of his income coming off of estates,
doesn't include his investments. Where the Lords' income would
include their investments, and that would be their total income. But with all of that
aside, you can see that Mr. Darcy actually makes more than the average
English Lord during this time period. The only difference is that
he just doesn't have a title. Now the question of course then comes up
if Darcy is definitely rich enough to have a title, then why doesn't he have one? And that's a very interesting topic I'm
going to go into in a different video. So definitely subscribe
if you want to see that. Okay. The next thing that Mrs. Bennet says is that Elizabeth and Darcy
should be married by a special license. And she's talking about
special marriage license. This is something I cover
in my video on "Why is Lydia running away to Gretna Green?" There were several different ways
to get married in Regency England. The most expensive and the most exclusive
was to get a special marriage license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, this is a really interesting topic
because opinions vary so much on whether Darcy and Elizabeth could actually
qualify for one of those special licenses. Because the people who usually qualified
to get a special license were English peers, children of English peers,
members of parliament, Knights, Baronets and other similar people. There's an actual list
of people who qualified. So what's really interesting is I saw
in a 1852 marriage guide about how to actually get one of these special license. And it did list out those
requirements of who could get it. But then it specifically stated that
essentially anyone could apply to receive one, if they felt like they had a special
or a weighty reason for having one. Because the Archbishop pretty much has
the ability to give them to whoever he wants at his own discretion. So even though Darcy and Elizabeth
wouldn't be on those lists of essentially people who have been pre-approved
for a special license, Darcy could very well apply for one anyway. And what's fascinating too, is the
fact that Jane Austen's own brother Henry, when he married their cousin,
Eliza, had a special marriage license. So Jane Austen would have been
very familiar with special marriage licenses since one was
used, even within her own family. And her brother, Henry was not
anywhere near being on that list of people who were approved to get them. And he was nowhere near the
social standing and wealth of Mr. Darcy. So Darcy with his social standing and
wealth, I personally think could have probably gotten one if he wanted to. So again, here we have Mrs. Bennet to being right about Mr. Darcy. So now I really want to put
Darcy into context of the overall social hierarchy at the time. And we're going to do
this with a quote by Mr. Collins. And this is when Mr. Collins is writing to Mr. Bennett to congratulate him on Jane
and Elizabeth's future marriages. This is why he says. He says, "Your daughter, Elizabeth,
it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet after
her elder sister has resigned it. And the chosen partner of her fate may be
reasonably, looked up to has one of the most illustrious personages in this land." Right? Darcy is an illustrious personage. And of course, when I used
to read Pride and Prejudice casually, I used to think, "Okay. It's Collins being
over-exaggerating Collins again." But no, Mr. Darcy was literally one of the
most illustrious personages in the land financially. And let's look at why. So as a landed gentlemen, Mr. Darcy fell into the top tier of society. Of course, that top tier included
Temporal Lords, which is Lords like earls and viscounts and dukes and stuff. Spiritual Lords, like the Archbishop,
baronets, knights, esquires and gentlemen. And of course that would just be
those who are land owning gentlemen. So in British society at the time,
this top tier of Lords and archbishops and land owning gentlemen was the
top 1.17% of the entire population. So just simplifying that down. They were the top 1% of society. And this top 1% usually had at
least six times as much annual income as the average annual income. If you were a poor person in the
top 1%, you still had six times what everybody else averaged. That's how rich these people were. So really let's analyze this top 1% here. And I'm going to put up
this social chart from 1759. I've of course, deflated Darcy's and
the Bennet's income down to what it would have been during this time period. And what do we see? Well, Darcy's family fell in
very high bracket of this 1%. In fact, his family would have
been in around the top 300 richest families in the entire country. In fact, he's the top 1.7% of the top 1%. When you're the top 1% of the top
1% you're really, really rich. And in fact, the main bulk of the
people in this top, 1% only had one fifth of Darcy's income or less. Which is of course right around
the place that the Bennet's fall. So while Darcy is in the top 300
families, Elizabeth Bennet's family would only be in around the top
2000 families in the country. There is a big difference there. Editing Ellie here. I just wanted to pop in and explain
something really quick about this 1% I'm talking about in the social chart. So the top of society was
defined by two different factors as we're looking at here. One is their income. They were some of the
top earners of society. I'm going to talk a little bit about
how the richest merchants also made around 600 pounds a year, which would be
ranking in the lower levels of this 1%. But the reason they're not included
in this 1% I'm talking about is the second factor of social class. So really the spiritual and temporal Lords
and the landed Gentry really did form the social class at the top of society, while
also forming some of the richest people. Does that mean that some merchants
didn't make as much as some of this 1%? No, but those merchants were not
included in the 1% here because they didn't have the social ranking. And of course, social ranking in
society at the time was a huge factor to be taken into consideration. Though, with that being said, there were
still very relatively few families out of the millions of families in England
at the time that would have made anywhere near close to what these guys made. So again, they really are in general,
the richest class of all society. So let's dive back into that now. And now, remember, this is only
the top 1% of over 1.5 million. Families in the country where
their average income during this time period would have been
more around 46 pounds a year. That's correct. 46 pounds. That's all they had to live
off of as an entire family. Meanwhile, even the richest merchants
were averaging around 600 pounds a year. Master manufacturers got about 200. A farmer had a range between
40 and 150 pounds a year. And the poor average laborer
in London only made around 27 and a half pounds a year. Now I want to talk about though,
one of the reasons, that sometimes people think that Darcy wasn't that
rich and that is because they compare him to the very, very, very top. So of course, if we look at this chart
again, we see that the very top of it would have been around 26,950 pounds. But remember there's only 10 families
in the whole country averaging that. And one of those 10 families happened
to be the Dukes of Devonshire. So the Devonshires in 1764 were averaging
around 36,000 pounds a year by 1813/1815, that had gone up to 70,000 pounds. And I think this is where a lot
of people think, "Well, the Duke of Devonshire has 70,000 pounds. Darcy only has 10,000 pounds. Darcy must not be that rich." But really, as we see from
this chart, that family was an outlier even among the rich. They were abnormally wealthy. And as we talked about earlier with
the Lords average being around 8,000 pounds in 1803, clearly they were
abnormal, even for the peerage set. They were astronomically rich. So I really just because there were
these few outliers of extreme wealth, this does not mean that Darcy was
any way less extraordinarily rich. Just to give you a modern example of
this, I went on forbes.com and I looked up the richest people in the world. And of course this is all net
worth stuff because I couldn't find their annual incomes. But the day I checked, the richest
man in the world was Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $177 billion. Now, even among billionaires,
Jeff Bezos is kind of an outlier. Him, Elon and Bill are some
of the very few people to have gone over that 100 billion mark. Anyway, Jeff Bezos is
number one, 177 billion. So then I wanted to find someone who
had only one seventh of that wealth. And I went down the list to
number 64, who has 25.5 billion. And that guy is named Leonard Lauder. Yes, he is the Estee Lauder
cosmetics company guy. And he has only one 1/7th
the wealth of Bezos. Which is of course the same
ratio that Darcy has presumably to the Dukes of Devonshire. And yet, if we look at the
Estee Lauder guy, he's still the 64th richest man in the world. I don't think there's anyone out
there being like, "You know who doesn't have that much money? The Estee Lauder guy. He's like middle class. Compared to Bezos, he's nothing. So he must not be rich." No, nobody is saying this. Obviously the Estee Lauder
guy still is very, very rich. Likewise, Darcy, even though he only had
one seventh of the Dukes of Devonshire's money, he was still ridiculously
wealthy during this time period. And of course Darcy's illustriousness
also comes in, when we think about how much land he owns. Of course, in order for Pemberley
to generate as much income as it does, he has to own at least
10,000 to 15,000 acres of land. And of course in the 18 hundreds, 10,000
plus acreage land owners were at the very top of all landowning gentlemen. And it reminds me of the scene in Pride
and Prejudice when Elizabeth is looking at Pemberley and she thinks this about Mr. Darcy. It says, "As a brother, a landlord, a
master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship. How much of pleasure or pain
was it in his power to bestow? How much of good or evil
must be done by him?" So here we see Elizabeth thinking
about the fact that he is this massive landlord and land owner that
does have so many people's lives, livelihoods and homes in his hands. And so really Darcy's, landowning
alone was a massive venture and put him at the top of society again. Which is of course why everyone in Pride
and Prejudice reacts to him that way. He is a big deal in the book because
in real life, Regency England, he would have been a very big deal. As Mr. Collins pointed out, with being one of
the top 300 families in the country. He's literally one of the most
illustrious personages in the land. Anyway, just to pretty much sum
up what we learned in this video. Basically was Darcy actually that rich? And the answer is yes, he was
ridiculously, extremely rich. And that is exactly why, as
I said, everyone in Pride and Prejudice reacts to him that way. Because he was, he was a
really, really, really rich. Admittedly, he's not even real, but if he
was real, he would have been really rich. Which at the very end of Pride and
Prejudice, when Elizabeth is asking Darcy, what made him fall in love with her? She points out that she thinks
it's because unlike all the other girls, she didn't fall all over him. Do you think that's the real
reason Darcy fell in love with her? Because admittedly, a lot of girls were
probably after him, him being one of the most eligible gentlemen in the country. So was her indifference,
the key to his heart? Let me know in the comments down
below and keep having an awesome day. Cause you're awesome. Bye!!!
