The Flirtatious Regency Balls Of Pride & Prejudice | Having A Ball | Real Royalty

i'm alice loxton and i present documentaries over on history hit tv if you're passionate about all things royal history sign up to history hit tv it's like netflix but just for history you've got hours of ad-free documentaries about all aspects of the past you can get a huge discount for history hit tv make sure you check out the details in the video description and use the code real royalty all one word when you sign up now on with the show [Music] pride and prejudice was published 200 years ago in 1813. it's an archetypal love story but also a sparkling and acute dissection of genteel regency society that has captivated readers for generations it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in one to the wife but love it as we might there's a whole layer of austin's nuance which is lost to modern readers austin's world was taken for granted by her contemporaries but it's surprisingly distant from us to understand her novel fully we need to re-imagine the time in which she lived in this programme aleister circ and i are going to step back to try to understand austin's world we're going to bring alive those details that have been deadened by the passage of time and how are we going to do it with a groundbreaking experiment we're going to recreate in the most accurate way possible the event which lies at the heart of pride and prejudice which drives the entire plot and where the two main characters meet and spa the regency ball film adaptations of the book have created an impression of the world of the ball but we want to know what would have really happened when the candles were lit and the band struck up and in doing so try to understand better what austin was saying for one night we'll turn back the clock two centuries at chorton house the home of austin's brother edward and recreate a ball as austin herself would have experienced it we'll prise open the regency wardrobe to feel the clothes in which austin imagined the bennett sisters we'll go to the cookbook of her friend and companion martha lloyd to conjure the dishes she enjoyed and will listen to dances set to music taken from the austin family's own music books when darkness falls in the ballroom it will be winter 1813. by discovering the minute details of the period the sights sounds and sensations austin knew from her own experiences in the ballroom we'll expose the hidden codes of regency courtship rituals see for ourselves the complex hierarchies at work and reveal the deep structure of one of the greatest love stories ever told after this you'll never read pride and prejudice quite the same way again [Music] pride and prejudice is a story of love against the social odds elizabeth bennett is a playful provincial nobody wooed by fitzwilliam darcy a handsome wealthy landowner and they meet at a dance the ball is integral to the plot of pride and prejudice and dancing was a key pleasure of austin's youth the ball was complex cruel and spectacular we're going to create an event central to the involuntary bewitchment between elizabeth and darcy and vital to the perpetuation of regency society ensuring we achieve absolute authenticity is a coterie of experts turn around quick quick former ballet dancer an authority on regency dance stuart master keep moving up till you get to the end melody's source from the austin family music books this looks very similar to austin's music camps will be orchestrated by music historians and played on original instruments costumes will be created with assiduous attention to detail foods the author would have tasted herself will be cooked by a leading expert on regency cuisine ivan day this is a very challenging project i don't think it's been done since the napoleonic wars in this country feasting our eyes on what jane austen saw will bring the background of her world into pin sharp focus by filling in the details the elements austin didn't need to explain to her readers will strip away the layers of history the village of chorten in hampshire where jane austen lived from 1809 resembles the fictional hamlet of longbourne where the bennett family live the village setting is important things move very slowly in austin's fictional world but they are minutely observed revolutions shadowed the regency civil unrest was threatened at home cannons were booming across europe but in austin's fictional world you can hear a pin drop with brothers at sea and her cousin guillotined austin obviously knew all about the wider world but in her fiction she recreated that world in miniature when human happiness hung on the arrival of a letter a stolen glancing church or a misunderstood remark austin lived and breathed her moment but remains utterly timeless pride and prejudice was prepared for publication in this cottage elizabeth bennett's world was on the upper fringe of jane austen's the novel was an inside job a witheringly accurate depiction of the competitive marriage market but also an analysis of a system that austin was a part of and who's important she recognised the bennett sisters don't work but they do have a job which is polishing the accomplishments that will make them marriageable a woman must have a thorough knowledge of music singing drawing dancing the bennett girls are ladies in waiting waiting for mr right but the young men are on a mission too only marriage will secure their dynasties will mr bingley and mr darcy plant their affections in hertfordshire the community is a gog it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife but that famous opening line expresses an essential truth not just about the regency but about pretty much any era in recent human history which is that a single bloke with a whole load of cash is most definitely a catch mr bingley causes a bit of a stir when he arrives in meriton because he's rich but mr darcy who's the son of an aristocrat is fabulously wealthy ten thousand a year so both men are desperate to find someone who's going to bear sons in other words it's not just austin's young women it's also the young men who are under this intense pressure to find a suitable mate but there's a problem all contact between young people was strictly controlled with so much at stake contact between the young men and women of the gentry the land owning class of the regency was closely regulated but there was one place where flirting intimacy and physical contact was allowed even encouraged the ballroom nothing could be more delightful to be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love the ability to dance was key to romantic success and the movements of the dance mimic the two and fro of courtship clumsiness was sexual suicide so it's not surprising that it's in the ballroom that the separate worlds of elizabeth and darcy collide creating the possibility for all that follows their maneuvering seems to be about the dance but beneath the manners it's all about attraction and rank the novel's first ball is an assembly a public event in the town of meriton our reconstruction is inspired by the more pivotal netherfield ball a private affair the contrast between the rowdia socially mixed gathering what ladies called a promiscuous assembly and an exclusive party of friends would have been sharply drawn for austin's regency readers professor john mullen has made austin's life's work his life's work society at that time drew quite a sharp distinction between a public assembly and a private dance at the netherfield ball the people come by invitation only unlike any event that's invitation only it has a higher prestige well it has some exclusivity yes as a young woman you know you might not risk dancing with the butcher or the baker that's right in meriton essentially if you could buy the ticket you could go and if you obeyed the conventions you were an accepted part of the event meritorion assembly is potentially more vulgar occasionally and of course mr darcy and the bingley sisters do sort of look down upon the meriton assembly because of that news of a private ball would always start with a personal invitation ours had been made with a press from 1820 printing was expensive even mr bingley's invitations would have been produced in bulk with blank spaces for the date time and the name of the guests invites would be sent to local dignitaries parents and chaperones and most importantly the gentile young of marriageable age was 20 when she began work on pride and prejudice the same age as elizabeth is when the story begins by then both should have learnt the key skill that they needed before they could even consider responding to an invitation to a ball dancing our younger boy goers are dance students like polite regency youngsters they're learning from a dancing master in this world it's understood jane austen doesn't have to tell anybody but we have to be told now that people are trained you know literally in the movements and how the dances work our dance master is regency dance authority stuart marsden rehearsals begin with a lesson in dan's history and literature we will learn a dance called the savage dance which is an english country dance and as mr darcy says any savage can dance and we're going to do a dance called uh la boulongsha mrs bennett exclaimed they danced the boudon show one imagines that the bennetts even without their sort of woeful lack of tuition and governances and all that sort of thing that they will have had a dancing master give them some lessons we will do a lady caroline knees waltz and then we're going to learn instructions from jane austen's cousin fanny austin's ladies companion from 1805 and she stayed with her in 1805. how central is dancing to the kind of turning points of the novel itself well i think the whole of the first part of the novel which sort of sets up especially importantly the relationship of mr darcy with elizabeth it's all done through a series of dances let's start with a kittenian jane austen loved kittenians so we're going to learn at return to protomp the return of spring so english country dances are long ways to dances it was tradition that gentlemen asked the girls if they will stand up with you and they have the right to say yes or no and it was traditionally you said no you would not dance that meant you weren't dancing at all right but just for now find a partner ballroom etiquette the person of the highest rank will dance closest to the orchestra in an essentially quite enclosed community like this imaginary hertfordshire town of meriton um it's the main sort of venue for people literally trying out partners you know it's william lucas he's a buffoon but he sort of comments on how good elizabeth is at dancing and it seems quite clear that she and mr darcy are good at dancing so they're compatible absolutely and when mr physically compatible physically compatible the ball is going to be set 1813 and during this time steps changed dramatically it was all because of the french revolution napoleon came into power and this whole noble dancing of baroque nobody could do it anymore because all the aristocrats had been in fact jane austen's cousin her husband had been guilty so the steps sort of changed over time so by the time we we're doing the ball now we'll actually be doing what's called quadrille steps so we go skip change with the right skip change with the left skip change with the left assembly assembly and you get this extraordinary effect i think in the novel that would be much stronger for her first readers who would have sort of seen the dance they would have seen it ready one with the right one with the left one with the writer sample assembly they would have seen the couples lining up and in a way perhaps even kind of heard the music and yet in the novel there's this incredible focus in on two people who could be in the middle of the sahara desert you know from all the attention that that is being paid to anything else and the novel mimics that extraordinary concentration of them upon each other the dance moves are rather more complicated than i'd expected that said there was rather an appeal to trying it out for myself it's fantastic i've just arrived at the studios to watch the very first dance rehearsal of the entire process and i was wondering about what regency dance would look like and it's very very prancy there's a lot of skipping as you can see and in a sense maybe it's not going to look as alien as i thought it would go behind number two stewart's quite a task master at times which is a good thing because we haven't got very long to rehearse okay i'm actually sweating and i actually think i'd swear i was like oh it's just gonna be fine a couple of bit of partner work and i'm actually dripping yeah i suggest you bring some emma gel next week you can feel it in your calves i can't understand how they did it in that time right no you're on the beat you're on the beat it's really hard doesn't it the steps were difficult and dance masters would publish manuals many of them designed to promote their dance schools and supplement their income edward payne's dance manual of 1814 lists prices ranging from five shillings and sixpence for a single lesson to one pound one shilling for six lessons dance tuition could be a lucrative business okay well done okay well hey hey stop you've got another seven to go you're proper dancers aren't you yes we're in training so when he says do a paddle rigger whatever it is you know what he means and i'm still struggling with the kind of you do one two three and then and then there's about another 18 steps yeah thanks so it's not easy right lunch go for lunch go go go this morning we've obviously done a few dances the one i think i got him two it felt like a lot harder i think it was gone the one i was doing was bloody complicated i thought it's a real tour de force for the for the brain just to remember but dancers in austin's time didn't necessarily have to memorize every step they might rely on a cleverly concealed crib sheet here we go there's a dance fan for the year 1792. hang on this is a fan covered in music with the steps as well with the steps on as well this is a crib shoes that's kind of such a cheetah they were common things yeah but the paper so hardly any survive these fans were the perfect tool for flirtation a temporary fluttering screen hiding the lips framing and eroticizing the eyes whilst dancing in austin's era could be delightful it was also more relentless and grueling than you might expect making matters even more challenging your clothes revealed every mistake and misstep assembling the authentic clothing for our ball is professor hilary davidson many screen adaptations of pride and prejudice dress the actors in the height of regency fashion this though misses a crucial point in austin's time the outfits reflected the range of social ranks who would have attended these balls social division by cut colour and texture would have been immediately evident to austin's readers do you think some will be more fashion forward than others in this period there's a far more personal input into clothing styles than perhaps we're used to because all clothing is made new very little is available ready made yes it's bespoke bespoke so the the fabric that you choose the cut that you choose the trimmings that you put on the bottom of your skirt there's far more of a personal input do you think people's position in society their age and i suppose their character would all be mapped in the dress they would wear for the ball it would absolutely and what's more people within the community can read that yes fairly precisely they all know exactly what that means and how what the story is behind the clothing and that's the language that's lost to us isn't it it is our ball goers are being fitted for various kinds of clothing as they would have been in austin's time guests representing men who were fashion conscious and who could afford it will be wearing the menswear trends of autumn winter 1813. colours are muted and the silhouette athletic exactly the looks that attracted fellow ball guests when messers bingley hearst and darcy arrived at the meriton assembly mr bingley was good-looking and gentleman-like he had a pleasant countenance and easy unaffected manners his brother-in-law mr hearst merely looked the gentleman but his friend mr darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine tall person handsome features noble mean and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance of his having ten 000 a year other guests will be a little more frugal in appearance but to modernize they're all rather striking i like the look of it a lot so much in fact i'm wondering if you've got a spare one what does it feel like to wear it's very tight fitting but you're not uncomfortable it's not so tight that you can barely walk or barely move you still have that sense of presence so i have broad shoulders so it fits it very well but like it just makes your back just just stand up rather than you can never slouch in that at all so maybe it was the ramrod stance imposed by this clothing which lay behind the visual appeal of darcy and bingley when they graced meriton with their presence the clothing is rather more revealing than i'd expected [Applause] it's very tempting to just keep your hands in it feels like you need some pockets so men are going to be wearing stocking legs and low heeled shoes we've got lovely britches with this full front and quite a complicated opening and then at the back they've got this little bit of room for adjustment there's a lot of room in here often men are just taking the long tails of their shirt and tucking them between their legs to use for underwear and the other important thing about this is that we're really starting to see frankly the groin area a bit of room there yeah yeah and then you've got somewhere in here if we take these trousers and have a look at one of the jackets this is this is big isn't it i mean it's too big what's happened is that the whole front skirt of the coat has been cut off and this is a very new fashion what you really notice is the groin visible for the first time in a long time yeah over 100 years exactly our female ball goers will all be wearing authentic underwear from corsets to petticoats the mudded hem of a petticoat was a plot device for austin it allowed the fashion conscious bingley sisters to mock carefree elizabeth bennett but it didn't bother mr darcy already electrified by her fine eyes get me back in time looks gorgeous but what was going on underneath the muslins let's enter the mysterious world of lingerie the women in our period it's often thought that they're not wearing underwear but they are they're wearing at least a chamise you know maybe cotton or linen and then another petticoat on top and then there's actually quite a lot going on below the skirt so all of this kind of mess would have been women's daily experience although in the 18th and early 19th century people are obsessed with propriety and the modesty of young women actually they're nicholas they're nicholas and even when the knickers come in the legs are still open at the crotch and you actually don't join up the crotches of knickers until i think the late 19th early 20th century so you know crotchless knickers were the norm [Music] many guests at a country ball would have made their own clothes or altered existing garments hillary is hand making one dress but austin dest with needle and thread might have made herself for a ball right i'll be your dressmaker's assistant tell me what to do so what i need you to do amanda is if you can just lift your arm lizzy this will be a dress that's been altered by generations of wearers a hand-me-down hybrid frock featuring elements of early 19th century design but also traces of previous eras i've cut it off if i'd used a dress from about 1800 we'd actually have a narrower bust and we'd be having to add length onto it so this is not dissimilar to a family at home kind of remaking an older sister's dress say exactly cutting it down well and a lot of the value is in the textile itself exactly and not so much in the labor and especially if you've got a good indian muslin what i'm going to do like they did at the time is kind of add a drawstring and i'm going to give you princess sleeves from abouts of 18 11 18 12. you start seeing these little puffed sleeves i'm going to use this as the base and then give you much puffier sleeves pin that in there um one of the big differences is just less fabric in the skirt at this period so a flatter flatter fall at the front totally flat fall at the front go on give us a demo love that stuff like that does that feel all right for you yeah yeah it feels fine like this it didn't feel at any point like oh this might make me trip or anything the point of all the clothing that ball goers monied and less well-off would have worn was the public display of assets financial and physical real and imaginary you're going to dance oh come on i'm sure by the way nice to meet you come on amsterdam like alistair i came to the studio to observe the young borgo as practicing their steps but joining in for a moment i began to feel a little of the joy that meant the energetic lydia bennett just couldn't stop dancing [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the characters never laughed it was considered that's me he's telling me off this because i got the giggles in it laughing's always very bad in women in the past it's a sign of sexual availability and you shouldn't show your teeth it's a sign of being garrulous plebeian vulgar but that's one of the reasons why i like lizzie bennett so much because she does seem to drive the plot with her own laughter so that's one of the things her irreverence i think is one of the things that makes her so attractive and easy for modern audiences to digest regency dancing it turns out is anything but the prim and proper activity we see in costume dramas it was a chance to show off athletic prowess and a prime opportunity for physical and verbal flirtation but of course it didn't take place in the airy spaciousness of a dance studio what were the actual conditions in which ball goers exhibited their hard-won skills chorten is different from netherfield park but it is a house that austin knew and loved she came here to enjoy the hospitality of her wealthy brother just the sort of place then where private regency balls would have taken place well this is the space where we're actually going to put the ball on [Music] what a great space the thing about edward austin's house is that it doesn't feel like it's been made into some naf country hotel it feels like i think it always has done jane's house is just down the road and we know that she came here we don't know for sure that she would have danced in a ball in this room but if there was a big social gathering thrown by her brother this is the obvious place to have put that on and even if she wasn't dancing you could imagine her standing by the fire drinking being the chaperone watching seeing what was going on it's not going to take much to make this feel as authentic as possible to take us right back to 1813 particularly because the whole thing's going to be candle lit so in fact looking around the only potential problem might be these electric chandeliers lisa white who advises the national trust on accurate illumination will show us exactly how a ball was lit two centuries ago it's splendid isn't it it's beautiful yes so if you imagine that we're recreating the netherfield ball and mr bingley wants to throw a really good party how's he going to sort out the lighting what would he do well if mr bingley was out to impress he would have lots of light especially wax candles not just in the chandeliers but all around the room and he would increase the light with beautiful mirrors to reflect the lighters as well because artificial light meant social status if you could afford lots you were obviously very rich beeswax candles were the smart candles grand people like mr bingley and mr darcy and the bennetts would have had in their in their best rooms um servants and poor people lived with tallow candles they were cheap they were made from beef fat or pig fat and they were smelly it was a bit like living in a fast food shop i love this idea that the candles would have been a form of conspicuous consumption it's sort of showing off because austin is so attuned to all of those nuances of status it's quintessential austin and people coming in would immediately have read the room absolutely yes and very often candles in the 18th century were sold by length and they would burn for four hours or six hours so that you didn't waste very much and you can imagine if you were one of the young miss bennetts and you arrived for a party and there were four four-hour candles you'd think oh no you know what stay longer than that or if you were mr bennett and you arrived and you saw six arkansas you're gonna be here forever the candles for our ball would have mr bennett in despair they'll burn for eight hours an event of the scale of the netherfield ball might have been lit by up to 300 of these candles at a cost of around 15 pounds a year's wages for a man servant balls were expensive affairs [Music] after all the exertion of strenuous dancing in a candlelit and wood-fired room perspiring ball goers would have worked up quite an appetite so in austin's time the ball also included a chance for the host to refresh his guests and show off with a lavish stopper ball the supper will be cooked by leading expert on historical food ivan day these are some of the recipes the balls suffer for 20 people there you see amongst the sources for our sauces pies and blemonges dishes of fish fouling game are recipes that austin might have cooked herself [Music] i do stuff like this all the time serving food in this very old-fashioned way which is called a la francaise where all the dishes are put on the table at the same time but on a smaller scale it became extinct as a way of dining in the middle of the 19th century because it is actually very tricky these young chefs that i've got absolutely brilliant they've taken on techniques that they've never done before this is a freezing pot or a sorbettier now don't get your hands cold we're going to make georgian ice cream food combined with the extraordinary decorative arts at the table of this period is really quite excellent and i'm hoping that it will be a revelation that's really delicious one dish that was on nearly every ball menu was white soup recipes vary but a veal stock was a common base as were powdered almonds pudding rice bacon anchovies and cream ivan's version draws on the cookbook of austin's friend martha lloyd pressured to set the date for the netherfield ball mr bingley laughed that he'd issue his invitations when he'd made enough white soup our guests will experience a feast for all the senses but elizabeth's supper was poisoned by the sound of her mother boasting of daughter jane's marital prospects and the sight of mr darcy listening in the dining room is the great scene of humiliation for elizabeth bennett but food is drenched with ideas of status in the early 19th century game is the great symbol of the gentry and that's why mrs bennett invites mr bingley to come and shoot partridge on her land partridge pie is just one of the delights that ivan day is dishing up for our ball his recipe comes from the housekeeper's instructor from 1805. this is very much a symbol of upperclass dining the pie contains four whole birds cooked in herbs liver bacon and mushrooms before serving it's opened and filled with veal gravy and orange juice the prize inside these things is to stick in your fork and pull out an entire bird what sort of opportunities do you think the kind of the food and the eating offers austin to display character well the food's really important because there's always a subtext food is a very important sign of status throughout the novel at the bingley's netherfield ball they're going to have really good food to show everybody their status and their wealth when elizabeth eventually gets to meet mr darcy's uh sister georgiana this extraordinary display of food status they're given grapes and nectarines and peaches which you know in derbyshire in the early 19th century is quite a kind of achievement while some of the cooking could have been done in advance a regency kitchen would simmer with stress on the night wherever possible ivan day is recreating the taste of the past by using georgian kitchen equipment but the ancient chorten range isn't in working condition you're confident that despite using this modern technology you're going to be able to recreate the taste of 1813 yeah but we don't want it just to taste like you want to look like it as well because this is going to be sitting on authentic regency silver that's what i'm realizing that the spectacle of the food is almost as important as the way it takes it well it's even more important actually for a ball i mean it's all about oscillations yeah and you've invested enormous money and all that stuff it's a total expression of your status the thing that's interesting is that if you've got silver platter that's a highly ornate artificial thing and then you're plonking on top of it a beautifully cooked bird but you can see the talons the claws the neck the beak the trouble is you're bringing your sensibilities about food a lot of people enjoyed actually eating the head of the chicken because it cooks to a wonderful mush and you just put it in your mouth and you suck the eyes out and the brains out through the beak and it's a wonderful gastronomic experience i'm going to need the suturing first ivan day's 63-dish supper will be served on solid silver salvas platters dishes and turins all treasures from the georgian regency era amongst the cutlery spoons once used by the prince regent the horde is in the care of christopher hartop on authority on english silver yeah this is all going to have to move up the savoury's over ivan will tempt our diners with jellies and blemonges or flummeries what i've got here is a really interesting mold which dates from about 1790 and it's a little bit of a delicate operation and what you're seeing there is what food really looked like this one depicts the cipher of george iii now i really get stressed but technically this is the nightmare one right now this is the big moment of this is one of the most famous of all georgian jellies it's called a solomon's temple so this might have pride of place on the table it looks very different from the food that we eat now sensibilities of people in the georgian period very different to ours they have different expectations but this is what we've lost this is the food that has been totally and utterly forgotten about mr bingley is is really expecting a great deal from his kitchen staff what is the big moment of his year um it must have been a great deal of tension down there i think in the search quarters those classes above the bennetts like bingley and darcy and lady catherine and the rest of them they lived in a world that was just full of stuff like this so we've looked at the sumptuous food the costume the dance lessons and the lighting but what we haven't yet explored is music what did people really dance to jane austen was a keen musician within her own collection of piano music her hidden clues to the kind of tunes she may have had in mind while writing the netherfield ball scenes the archive at southampton university contains the austin family music books curated by professor janiece brooks we know from her letters that austin copied out sheet music pieces in these musical scrapbooks include tunes she probably played herself the crucial question is does this volume contain anything actually written by jane probably there are a couple that are very good match this looks very similar to austin's early music hand it's so tantalizing if this is actually jane austen's hand there's a glittering precision to that yeah this is a very very precise copy and in fact one of her other nieces caroline austin talks about how jane austen played from her manuscript books that she had copied out and and she makes a comment about the writing and she says it was so neat it was as if it were print let's see if i can find the thing you want to see that oh my right brilliance that's amazing so someone what is this this is a profile of a woman a girl this this is amazing presumably this is someone who's got slightly bored whilst they're transcribing the music and they've decided to do a doodle in the margins um this is this is what i'm i'm i'm very very fancifully calling um my little jane austen musical portrait so yeah yeah it's fantastic let's pretend let's tell him he's right no we don't do that in academia i thought that was really exciting because feeling so close to jane austen's hand is a very rare thing certainly for me that was the first time i'd seen potentially her own handwriting the way she wrote music and for such a prolific writer there was surprisingly little of her own hand that survived for instance many of the letters have been burnt we don't actually have the first draft of pride and prejudice and it was so eloquent to open up this quite unpre-possessing quite potentially uninteresting looking book with its yellowed old pages mottled fox just felt so old and to suddenly recreate the sense of a whole community a real social context which fired and enthused jane every single day of her life in the piano music that austin copied so assiduously are the melodies she enjoyed there are classical pieces folk songs and traditional heirs and others to which she would herself have danced at balls popular music at the time was widely collected but instead of being notated for orchestras it was summarized for the piano to recreate the music of the ballroom they have to be rearranged a task undertaken by professor william drabkin naturally he's using a piano from 1796. the things that you've got here are what i have done to some music that i was given i don't want to overdo this because after all the focus is on the dancing not on the musicians in a gallery wherever they may happen to be i mean people come to dance and the musicians are there to provide music for the dance they're not there to perform great music if i could put it that way if i could put it no flourishing [Music] boar guests may not have been concentrating on the music but they were certainly concentrating on each other guests at a regency ball knew that appearance was everything austin tells how on the evening of the netherfield ball elizabeth bennett dressed with more than usual care a process that would have involved more than just her clothes for someone whose letters portray such a love of fashion austin gives scant detail about the lotions and potions that must have enhanced the bennett's sister's natural charms but there's a clue to her ambivalence about artifice the sour bingley sisters sneer at lizzie bennett's healthy outdoorsy complexion so brown and coarse makeup has always been risky too much was the sign of a trollop so did nice girls really reach for the rouge pot it seems they did running the cosmetics team for our ball is sally poynter a leading authority on the makeup of historical makeup do you make all these i do yes yes so you sit at home in your kitchen doing a bit of kitchen chemistry yeah i'm an archaeologist by training and i research early recipes most of them use ingredients that could be got fairly easily and don't use any equipment that you didn't have in a normal kitchen so it was accessible to fairly ordinary women what are the main features of the look are quite rosy cheeks we could use alconet root little blue flowers but the root gives us lovely clear sheer red color this is cochineal rouge i've read many studies about i've had no idea one of those is a beetle to the best of my knowledge this is the first time that accurately reconstructed cosmetics have ever been used on an entire cast oh really i believe that this is making history doing this today [Music] and what of the men elizabeth bennett is initially interested in dashing officer mr wickham was his ellen boosted by time at the mirror did his cheeks match his coat oh we got a red coat would you really have imagined that a red coat would have worn makeup for a dance interestingly small amounts of rouge turn up on mail toiletry accounts right through to the first world war particularly on offices it does seem to me these are these stick on sideburns but this is the period when um the wig increasingly has been abandoned but there would still be an older generation i think you would hang on to their wigs i believe we have one or two gentlemen who are going to be wigged and possibly powdered they are representing as the netherfield ball approached anticipation was frothing in the villages the thrill of getting into your party clothes is surely unchanged but for a regency dance that anticipation was rocket fueled by weeks of preparation we know from austin's letters that she was interested in fabrics but in her fiction she makes an interest in frills a sure sign of moral weakness and that's why the younger bennett sisters are slaves to haberdashery the village of longborne was only one mile from meriton the most convenient distance for the young ladies who were usually tempted this three or four times a week to pay their duty to their aunt and to a millionaire's shop just over the way in the costume truck hillary davidson is dressing our guests in the garments that would have expressed exactly where a mrs bennett or a mr darcy would have stood on the meriton social ladder the quality and style of clothes were then as now powerful social signifiers and bingley's sisters mrs hurst and caroline bingley pay beady attention to what they and others wear well this is made out of silk this is possibly one you know mrs hurst or miss bingham oh really so mrs bennett talks about mrs herschel she's never seen anything so elegant so hilary is this a simpler dress of the kind that perhaps a miss bennett might want still possibly quite fancy for a country ball so i'm thinking this is a this is a lydia bennett of all the girls loves fashion the most this is more like what mrs bennett would have won the cat is the sign of matronly modesty yes you just see the transformation in how people treat you so you feel you've got a certain amount of authority yes absolutely through your bonnet oh yeah totally okay we're into sort of more age-appropriate dressing here i mean mrs bennett's not that old but not in terms no in fact i think people are probably surprised to learn that she's only about 41 42 and actually she's often played by much older actresses yeah oh wow so i think she still has genuine claims to being you know alluring cotton wool and taffeta whisper to the expert but muslin is the textile that most of us associate with the ladies of the regency this is a 19th century muslin is this is beautifully diaphanous and it is you know one of the great legends is it not that women you know where these dresses were practically see-through and the women might even can wet their muslins to reveal their limbs you're not going to be wearing that to a dance or something like that and you it's the extremity put a bit of water onto it and see what happens like you've just been running through a fountain oh yes or venus arising from a shell or something if there really was this dampened muslin it probably wouldn't even pass in saint james's we're talking private parties um where we're very private very private parties actually you'd see everything through that this is the sort of ensemble that i probably imagine mr darcy would be wearing really i'm not sure he'd go so far as the red i think he's quite be quite conservative in his taste look at the quality of the buttons here they're not too ostentatious and very well fitting breeches which is of course a very important part of regency men's dress so this is our mr darcy so 10 000 pounds a year 10 000 pounds a year mr darcy was extremely wealthy the garments of a less well-off gentleman like mr bingley's brother-in-law are more surface than substance perhaps the person we could pin this on is mr hurst mrs hurst is explained as marrying a man of more fashion than fortune you can see just how flashy this waistcoat is by comparison with our mr darcy's quite restrained one invitations to a country ball might also extend to the sons of local gentlemen this is made out of wool and the colours they're far more restrained so this is provincial gentility as opposed to metropolitan fashion absolutely hillary has been burning the midnight oil so hillary can we at long last see the dress time to reveal the dress she's been making by hand a hybrid of various hand-me-down garments that the bennett girls and austin herself would have recognized and that which the bingley sisters would have sneered this is the little white dress of the regency period you can make it as elaborate or as simple as you want to and given that jane austen herself was good at embroidery do you think there'd be an expectation that you would improve the dress yourself if you're a good needle woman which you're expected to be it's one of the female accomplishments you can absolutely show off your work in your clothing so who would wear this dress i think this is an elizabeth bennett dress in the final hours before the ball there's a thrill of anticipation throughout short in the house austin was well aware of the tingling excitement generated by waiting for an event that brought the possibility of life-changing romance delivering heat and light in the dead of winter if there had not been a never field ball to prepare for and talk of the younger miss bennetts would have been in a pitiable state at this time for from the day of the invitation to the day of the ball there was such a succession of rain has prevented their walking to merit and once perhaps we've neglected balls as arenas of um not just social but sexual interaction yeah you know in 19th century novels there are lots of balls but in pride and prejudice it has a sort of minute kind of attention to the nuance and gesture of every every single detail is so dramatically telling no other novelist does it as brilliantly and there is this sort of extraordinary structural thing that you know there are series of dances and you can see them sort of maneuvering around each other sort of denying what is becoming ever more evident i mean especially mr darcy this absolutely proper person but actually sensual and that the dance is the epitome of his mix of correctness and restraint on the one hand and further on the other like austin herself the genteel readers who first devoured pride and prejudice knew the sights and sounds of the ballroom she was free to concentrate on the drama of emotion leaving modern readers with tantalizingly few clues about the ball itself that economy can sometimes be frustrating yeah and trying to find out about the historical background two things that happen in jane austen it can be really really important because uh uh she is asking you to see things which she could be confident her first readers could see and which we can't see anymore austin's economy of style is particularly apparent when it comes to the specifics of what goes on in the dining room the food we've prepared is like the clothes and the makeup almost theatrical in its flamboyance the netherfield supper features some of the most important exchanges in the novel now we begin to see what the dining room might have looked like you're all professional waiters well ivan and i are going to try and make you unlearn everything you've learned because this is going to be completely different to any table you've ever served at we're going to have three rows of dishes laid out when the people sit down at each end of the the table will be a soup chewing now there are two soups there's a choice i don't know how it was done but i would imagine one of you will be in charge at this end and then the waiters will take the hair soup to colonel blankenstop over here and white soup to jane bennett over there you'll be able to do this if you just play some of the common sense from your experience it'll be fun to see how you get on so we're going to lay fork on the left to our eyes upside down blade of the knife facing into the plate [Music] i mean i'm amazed how many dishes are going to be on here the sheer logistics of it is what we found daunting keeping track of each dish and then having to go down to the kitchen decorate it and then bring it up and put it in exactly the right position is very very complex the trouble with the sort of dining is that no one really says very much about it jane austen only gives us little clues so how are you so sure that what we're going to recreate will be what would have been at netherfield we can pick up things for instance in the literature about dining which was published at the period the trouble is it's open to debate and the only way of finding out is to do it and that's what this is really about in recreating the netherville ball supper we're hoping to bring to life for this forgotten world of georgian dining which jane would have been very very familiar with do you feel that it will give us a more nuanced understanding of the novel the whole milieu really of this extraordinary period in british history which is one of our finest we've got a table plan here this is based on one published in 1815 so we know it's pretty authentic [Music] as dusk approaches and the beginning of the ball draws near one other crucial and surprising element has to be added to the reconstruction lisa as you can see we've got this electric moon moonlight would have been extremely important not only to help light guests as they came towards the ball but even more important for when they left the last highwayman to be hanged for his felonies was only a couple of years after pride and practice was published the thin light of the moon was enough to make journeys safer to and from the venue but the light inside the ballroom had a different purpose film electricians are more used to putting light in than taking it out but the electric chandeliers must go for something rather older lisa and i have got a little bit of light work to do as we create the conditions under which darcy first fell underneath elizabeth's spell [Music] no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face then he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes [Music] two hours after moonrise our guests are gathering in the dreary winters of a small village a ball was a fairytale highlight in the enveloping darkness and out here in the hallway the common passages we're in the 21st century we're ready to observe but as soon as anyone passes through this door there in 1813 or as near as we can get it [Music] when elizabeth bennett arrived at the netherfield ball she was out to conquer the heart of mr wickham but a few short hours and just two dances later and her furious thoughts were all fixed on mr darcy but like all the guests lizzie came to see and be seen keen to please the man on whom she set her sights [Music] everything that happens in the novel all the romances on a lot of the sort of misunderstandings start at the ball and in a way jane austen is sort of making fictional use of something which must have been the case in a small town like maritime this is simply the biggest event of the year it's the moment that lights the blue touch paper [Music] the excitement is palpable isn't it on you know the hubbub everybody arriving is this a key moment of the drama absolutely it's all part of it because you're seeing who not just who's wearing what but who's there so no guest list goes around the village well normally there'd be lots of gossip of course but but um you're explicitly told in pride and prejudice that the bennett's been cooped up for five days by the rain and so elizabeth thinks wickham is going to be there and she has no way of knowing from gossip that he's not going to be also presumably cabin fever is mounted absolutely they've been pent up it was so ratcheted up to a new home imagine what state lydia's in can't you you know pent up for five days she's ready to go coming in they're all watching each other this will be the moment when you get the first glimpse of the taffetas and think will my own muslin cut them off absolutely and you you of course it's big deal in pride and prejudice because this is the bingley's ball and the bingleys are sort of london people and and they they wear more fashionable clothes so these hertfordshire folk are all sort of jostling for their approval as well as trying to compete with each other [Music] so i hadn't thought about this at all but of course they need to change their shoes because you can't walk through this snow and you're dancing pumps you're not going to go dancing in a pair of really heavy boots you want to be changing into something that's really soft and light and just in cases the foot this isn't this isn't something we do anymore we forget that they have this culture of changing the shoes i mean this looks like the kind of thing that a ballerina might wear today but everyone's doing it all of the blokes as well this is the origins of of ballet shoes so you would inevitably have your own pair of dancing shoes of course you'd be coming to the ball with your lovely little bag of shoes changing them and you're ready to go i mean practically speaking as well oddball rooms got wooden floorboards if you had heavy boots that'd be making a tremendous racquet as well you couldn't hear the musicians over that kind of noise contemporary accounts speak of dancing shoes being shredded in a single night through the exertions of the dancers it's also a kind of parade of social distinctions how you arrive at the ball is in itself significant who has their own carriage who has to get a lift from somebody else the bennetts have their own carriage they're actually quite well off yeah but um we're told that the horses for the carriage have to be used on the farm as well so they're sort of slightly in between grand and actually shabby genteel the carriage is one of the key markers in jane austen's novels and in reality in the early 19th century between really the wealthy and the merely genteel you need about a thousand pounds a year to own a carriage because it's not just the carriage is it it's all the horses and all the tackle a man is even linked to the nature of the transport how grand a carriage how big a carriage and of course going to the ball it's a simple fact do you depend on somebody else for a lift there and a lift back are you going to have to leave when somebody else does or are you going to be like mrs bennett she's in command of her destiny and she especially makes sure that the bennett carriage is the last to leave [Music] the guests are presented to the host and hostess this was the moment when at the merit and assembly ball mr bingley made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room all this formal introducing do you think it's significant um i suppose it doesn't seem unreasonable for the netherfield ball dr hannah gregg is a specialist in the history of high society hierarchy pervades all social encounters in the kinds of community that austin writes about this is in fact a private ball isn't that a crucial distinction for the regency gentility yeah there's a fundamental distinction the private events is invitation only whereas a public assembly is a much more mixed company there must have been lots of people who thought that they were better than the rest and austin makes that very clear and particularly in pride and prejudice where darcy is you know the meriton assembly appears to be too proud to participate in any of the dances and he says i didn't know any of the other women present so i only danced with bingley's sisters and as she says though and what and no one can be introduced to the ball ladies and gentlemen if you would like to be standing and form sets for the kittenian the return to proton austin makes very clear that darcy and the bingleys feel relatively close to high-ranking london circles and that they had a knowledge of what it was to be fashionable [Music] this is the cotillion the first dance of the evening and this is the dance that i tried out a bit in rehearsal and i can attest it's hard work but then the entire ball is hard work with physical social and emotional investment and cost [Music] cotillions were french versions of traditional english country dances the french tended to dance at home in small salons and the square shapes of the catillion worked well in tight domestic spaces their formations were more intimate and you were much more likely to dance with people of the same rank and expertise [Music] john does it make any difference to you seeing a re-enactment before you being in such close proximity with the dance yeah it makes it makes a real difference i mean apart from anything else i always laughed at mr collins for being such a terrible dancer and elizabeth suffering the first two dances with him but actually you feel a bit of sneaking sympathy for him because these dancers are beautifully elaborate but really tricky you need a you need to really learn them and it's not surprising that he finds a challenge just much too much we should have some claude covers in there well you can imagine there must have been a few people who were not as proficient but i think obviously some of them were people like elizabeth you imagine that she and mr bingley and jane and mr darcy probably were very good at doing it and when you see them doing this you think the the opportunities to make a mr collins of yourself are absolutely legion it goes on forever it does it adds a new sort of sense doesn't it for me it does that that when elizabeth's dancing with mr collins she's in having to endure it for a long time seeing this man do the wrong things and having everybody watch you and of course watch elizabeth and mr collins and think of them as possible partners you could tell they were absolutely exhausted by the end of it they were tired you could see next we have the savage dance and then we have the waltz which is very very pretty and i think one of their favorite dances and then finally bulanche which will kill them you all came out looking hot i've literally never experienced that before just nonstop we never ever have done a dance that's longer than five minutes ever like and say it's great and that's just the first one yeah exactly yeah you know stuart was talking a lot about there's lots of time for uh flirtation for talking yes was there any or was it all just kind of like dance dance do the movies and a partner that i had we had a moment where we were just like hey again and like it was kind of like flirty in that way rather than like making the move it was kind of like it's us again who was that jolly yeah you have you had a flirty moment yeah good the ball is working that's excellent i think i can marry him you should try the dance you're right i should try it maybe you should take it um put on the costume i have had a costume fitted and i am thinking that i should you need to you need to find your wife yeah we should shall we is that is that an offer an invitation i'd love to i look forward to dancing with you good everybody looks lovely it seems to be pure pleasure but presumably there are other tensions under the surface which you know we can't see yeah and i think that's actually revealed by a recreation like this is this is more than just a kind of scene of romance and young flirtations there's also a whole range of other sorts of social interactions and connections that are being made or broken at a ball so perhaps a business transaction might be happening in one corner someone might be trying to approach a patron to try and enhance their trade um there might be distant family members trying to re-equate themselves with more privileged you know people within their family in a way it's a kind of microcosm of society then and on all the sort of social obligations and networks and alliances and tensions helping to lubricate those tensions liberal supplies of portuguese wine and fortified negas punch in the kitchen ivan is preparing a beverage for later a stimulant without which no regency ball was complete i'm making punch ella romaine roman punch and it basically a mixture of alcohol usually rum more brandy with lemon water italian meringue which is basically egg whites that have been whipped up into a real froth and then a very very hot sugar syrup has dribbled in champagne and it's just frozen this is actually a refreshment that's going to be served perhaps in an interval and it had become really popular in about 1813 this isn't the only frozen delicacy in the early 19th century italian eateries started to appear this fashion for italian food may explain why parmesan ice cream features in frederick nuts royal and imperial cookbook of 1809. now what flavor do you think that is cheese yeah is it it's parmesan cheese is it really very very creamy yeah but they had pretty high level taste at least at the level of mr darcy and mr bingley it's nice i like it it's really rich in it i better get on with lots of other things i think there's a little bit of an issue with the sturgeon which may be very urgent this noble fish will be stewed in a vinegar lemon and horseradish stock as directed by william henderson in the housekeeper's instructor of 1805. sturgeon can grow up to 16 feet long even this one's a challenge yeah it's never going to go in there what i would suggest is the bit of surgery we can probably ornament it to such a degree people won't notice it's rather a squat short sturgeon in austin's day the fish was common but today wild sturgeon are endangered ours had to come from a fish farm hang on a minute don't pull it yet that's it look at that no one will ever know the fish reduction complete ivan moves into the kitchen to turn up the temperature we want everything out on the table within the next 20 minutes or so two hot dishes that have to be ready for so the two suits if we're gonna get this stuff up there we gotta go the team have worked on 63 dishes 40 of them sweet 23 savory the proof of their puddings and everything else is just two dances away [Music] back in the ballroom the dancers prepare for the second dance the savage dance was a craze in 1813 taken from a song and dance routine in a musical based on robinson crusoe savagery on the dance floor stopped short of unbridled tropical abandon but there was plenty of opportunity for eye contact and whispered aside ladies and gentlemen the savage dance [Music] are they flirting while they're dancing absolutely they're flirting there are these moments of formalized but sort of quite physical everybody's wearing gloves as you know it's not flesh on flesh but still these moments of physical contact and movement jane austen called it another of her novels the felicities of rapid motion and doesn't mr darcy put his finger on it because sir william lucas asked him to admit that that dancing is one of the sort of polite accomplishments of a civilized society and mr darcy says every savage can dance he's saying that these genteel people in this hertfordshire town in the early 19th century they're actually doing something rather primal the dance that elizabeth and darcy have she doesn't specify but it's a dance which is movement and talk and it clearly also pairs people off you see them in the ball together and you sort of see them as they are throughout the novel apparently resisting each other even being slightly hostile to each other the relationship proceeds entirely by resistance it's quite striking is that they have their most in a sense unguarded conversation well they're dancing together later in the novel when they're in the same room together on their own they're completely silent so it's as if they need the ball to sort of release those energies it literally acts out their mutual fascination it's like a fairy tale come true it's such a joy to see the dances in the setting with the costume the hair superb it's an absolute dancer's dream this was so hot and the whole room just felt so much more romantic and my heart started to go and my chest i really felt as though i was falling in love with someone that was meant to be a potential suitor it's wonderful how i've been completely transformed i never thought it would be like that [Music] to modern readers the interaction between mr darcy and elizabeth bennett at the netherfield board does seem very very flirtatious but do you think it's anachronistic to use a term like flirtation for the early 19th century no not at all twice it seems like incredibly modern conceits but it is actually an 18th century words used quite commonly and particularly actually in reference to balls you can never be seen to be flaunting any kind of immodesty by even seeming to kind of invite a man's attention potentially you're risking your reputation it's a difficult path to tread and it's interesting that you know charlotte lucas suggests to elizabeth bennett that maybe she should be slightly more forthcoming towards mr darcy well and also doesn't she say that jane should do the same to mr bingley to secure him and that she should actually be warmer yes yeah yeah then she writes to completely seal the match which is interesting because there are these conduct book rules of how young women should behave somebody's got to break the rules a bit for a courtship to move forward it is warm in there but it also looks beautiful with the candles i'm delighted that i did get a costume so that i can experience what the ball's like i'm actually feeling quite excited lizzy hates it although everyone seems to have quite a good time here there are all manner of disasters and social awkwardnesses um which i suspect i may be about to experience myself ellie hello you look really good thank you nice you do you like it i do like actually i think i think it makes the guys look so good you sort of stand differently yes you please play take your partners for lady caroline knees [Music] i'm really struck by how much looking is possible because even if you're not dancing with the man you're interested in you could be sort of twirling about in full view yeah i think that was really brought home to me yes you never get such close encounters with people and a permission to kind of stand and stare it was said in the late 18th century that a man who could not dance was at a disadvantage to love because he couldn't show himself to his best form but the other thing which i thought was really striking is what happened when alistair joins the dancing because you could see all the girls around him were really rather thrilled that he was there and it sort of changed the temperature of that all the women's eyes were on alistar and you could imagine him turning up and everyone else just sort of not standing a chance or everyone being yeah dazzled [Music] it's funny double sense even while you're looking at the person that you're most interested in you hope they're looking at you you're being watched by other people some very kind of private moments that people are having but in front of everybody yes and everybody else coming to conclusions about who's with who and how they're behaving and what it tells them even the most intimate encounters are also a performance [Music] [Applause] at least i didn't disgrace myself i wasn't quite mr collins more raucous and a little bit um ragged around the edges and i think that's a good thing because it's real and it's not that vision we have of the past in which it's extremely decorous and tightly controlled it's like a proper ball should be at least i think tonight i proved every savage can dance feels trance-like and almost mad you wouldn't know that until you do it and i guess that's one of the real pleasures about re-staging this ball is that we can go back to the book with a much more nuanced understanding of what austin wrote actually approached it almost like those very first readers in 1813. one inescapable factor is the heat right on cue ivan's frozen punchella remain arrives to relieve us that is good it's really good it's got a bit of a kick but that's refreshing these were traditionally served in between dances and the idea was that it was an opportunity to scan the room and see if you could think about your next partner if you danced twice with someone that was a particularly good sign especially if you're mrs bennett and you notice that jane and bingley have danced twice these spoons actually belong to the prince region they come from brighton pavilion i think they're rather valuable as a result the dance at the end i'm sure after you've had one of these in between every dance that does really enjoy it i feel a bit like we could dispense with the spoons and then just down it um but that probably wouldn't be very regency no i just need to consult my oracle here right we basically need to start dishing up we need big spoons we need ladles we need slices down the corridor the last dishes are ready for the waiters in a few moments our guests will taste a freakando reveal and the remarkable coal fowl with skewers or atelier garnished with crayfish olives and black truffles amongst the hot fare a favorite of austin's a dish of slow roasted veal shredded and strewn with hard-boiled egg yolks mushrooms false meatballs and sweet breads this is a dish that gets mentioned a lot in jane austen's novels particularly in pride and prejudice it's a ragu of veal this is emblematic really of the sort of thing that would have happened in mr darcy's kitchen and it's a dish that is heavily associated with the enemy of the period which is france so it's not considered really to be a patriotic dish to eat and it's associated with foppish and high living mr hearst who was very fashion conscious when he discovered that elizabeth actually preferred a plain dish to a ragu he had absolutely nothing to say with her so he felt that the ragu actually was a dish that was a very worthy one okay so could you go and get it into position some dishes are hot for now but the roasted widgeon a type of duck and another favorite of austin's hariku of mutton have to travel through the corridors and passages how close are we for them these molded ices set in georgian molds are flavoured with bergamot oil of orange they would be brought into the dining room at the very last minute grab the pineapple and i want you to dress it with some myrtle leaves very quickly more water ices flavored with tamarind and alcoholic negative punch this is a fly by the seat of your pants job isn't it excuse me folks where's the ices they're gone oh no no no no no they've got to be dressed with leaves very quickly [Music] a haunch of venison and a gallon of gravy are readied for the journey a flotilla of savoury dishes head to the dining room traveling by silver just time to dress the remaining sweet items that will arrive when the savories are finished in jane austen's emma mrs weston proposes a ball with sandwiches she's shouted down by the company who agree that a ball without a supper is a fraud upon women and men [Music] ladies and gentlemen would you like to be seated for suffer [Music] in pride and prejudice eating brings everybody together in the ritual of a meal but also divides them into two sorts of people those with manners and those without do you think that's an important moment when there's the break for supper and you move on in and eat together well it's a very important moment at the netherfield ball in pride and prejudice because of course it's um it's half time as it were we're not told very much about what they're eating at that table but it's clear that it'd be a show off here absolutely would be a show off the affair [Music] mr bingley and his sister would have made sure that the locals those who were lucky enough to be invited were left in no doubt of the bingley wealth the table seemed to be full everything here did you try a little bit of everything you tried a lot of the different meats and had hair yeah how was that that was great it was really interesting i've never had hair before the fish kind of went that way but this is very different to normal don't have a spread put on like this every day ivan was saying that it'd be weird to see how people would exchange the food yeah and leaning across as well they were happily to just lean across and grab something and pass that to someone else and move over here so so not that sort of in a sense not so bright just quite no yeah it's getting there people were hungry yeah the meat was really good it was cooked a bit different than i would usually cook it and i really enjoyed it and i really love the the whole grab it atmosphere you know what you can't get away with at home with supper in progress a few guests sneak away to dance some scottish wheels and that's exactly the dance that darcy invites elizabeth to try she refuses to contemplate when she's staying at netherfield park when jane has the flu [Music] in the dining room the sweet course is arriving by 1794 it's thought that there were over 700 confectioners in london alone and our menu reflects just what a sweet tooth the bingley's bennetts and darcy's are likely to have had two kinds of gato six kinds of biscuits a deluge of hot house fruits jellies and of course the flouries that's amazing this is basically an ice bucket parmesan ice cream it's very bizarre but it's gorgeous the way that dishes were spread out across the table at regency ball suppers forcing people to help themselves and each other made for a very lively and raucous dining experience but it didn't stop diners from watching and listening so this whole thing about mr darcy overhearing a conversation from the other side of the table yeah i think if you're chewing it into someone talking like listen to april now i can still hear talking about the ice cream so and especially if someone's been overtly loud you will definitely pick up on what they're saying at the netherfield ball in pride and prejudice what do people talk about at that table well one of the things they talk about mrs bennett have you scored yes well mrs bennett talks very very loudly about what she sees has been going on in the first half and very loudly and tactlessly because she's talking about how she thinks already presumptuously she thinks her eldest daughter jane has got mr bingley the biggest prize the new rich young man and mr darcy can hear it all and elizabeth and she can see that he can hear and that he must be sort of thinking something about how terrible her family are what about the entire evening it's definitely been an amazing experience because when you hear pride and prejudice you're like oh yeah old book play it's about older times but if everyone got to experience this i think you'd just take a different look at it and just think this is incredible well i'm glad that you've had such a good ball after more than 60 dishes it's time for the final dance the boudoir is one of the few dances that austin actually names in pride and prejudice its name is a reference to cheeky folktales of amorous goings-on down at the bakery this dance it's a fitting last dance because it's a saucy rollicking show-stopping ladies and gentlemen la bouloncho [Music] so the very last starts our dance is still quite sprightly the boulenger the baker who's sort of dancing with every woman in the village that's something else that you don't get i think from the book that you can see when you see these dances you're with your partner but you're also with lots of other people lots of sort of exchanging and people slap men are trying you on for science yeah yeah you know all that sort of jigging about it's not actually terribly decorative or polite no i think that's probably the thing that struck me most is that you know the dancers we have doing it i mean they're young they're fit their practice and after a couple of dances the sweats pouring when it says lydia danced every dance you really think she's got a bit of heft in her that girl it is a really physical thing and that's part of the thrill and excitement of it for people i mean they build up it's as if you have to go into training all the more reason why there's a lot of time afterwards not just to analyze what's what's happened but actually to sort of recover from it really [Music] seeing them dancing here is that anything that you hadn't quite pictured from reading accounts of it in manuscripts i'm struck by how difficult it looks but the men actually look physically quite exposed their clothing reveals the men's footwork yeah as you find i'm kind of gazing at their calves like if they're doing all of those leaps and things in a way that i'm not so much drawn yeah because it's hidden by their skirts so do you think it's more important for men to be able to dance well than for women that is kind of what i feel that i've learned even when you're reading writing prejudices you tend to that sisters that it's particularly important for them but actually for me it's it's the men who seem to be facing the greatest challenge [Music] after i finished the waltz i had a little bit too much punch so i came outside but they are still going strong and it's so clear now just how exciting the nederfield ball would have been full of people fine clothes lots of booze they're clearly having a whale of a tongue what have we learned really or have we justified our focus on the ball i mean the ball is very important in the in the plot but in a way you can see how the ball is so important to austin because it it sort of epitomizes what the whole novel is about the sort of set of maneuvers really which are at once quite formalized but also quite sort of sensual and that that people are kind of maneuvering especially elizabeth and mr darcy sort of moving around each other in a way that is kind of playful but also restrained and it's as if the whole of their relationship is a kind of dance but it's not just love is it we're also seeing this is a kind of vortex for uh snobbery and the exhibition of of rank and inclusion and exclusion yeah yeah it's all those things the ball is taken by jane austen as being kind of like life so it's not just the dance of love it's the dance of life it's about class and status and who you know and and it's about a world in which everything you do is being watched by somebody else it's the representation of a society in which every single kind of gesture is open to interpretation by other people [Music] perhaps the most important thing our ball has revealed to me is the jeopardy at play on the dance floor in an era when marriage was unbreakable and a polite girl's only career your future could be sealed in a single twirl a dance was never just to dance when darcy and elizabeth touch and talk bristling hostility is giving way to irresistible attraction readers knew that it could only end one way pride and prejudice is the textbook novel of courtship filtered through the consciousness of the heroine it's also an exquisite comedy of social manners and dancing turns out to be central to both as a social historian i knew that a ball was a goldfish bowl for local polite society magnifying alliances and networks tensions and riffs but i had no idea that dancing was such a powerful accelerator of romance [Music] you

Channel: Real Royalty

Views: 565,436

Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice, regency era, regency balls, royal recipies, royal documentary, Alastair Sooke, amanda vickery, jane austen documentary, regency era royalty, chawton hampshire, jane austen house, full length documentaries, jane austen books, regency balls dances and ballroom etiquette, regency era dance, regency era fashion, regency era documentary

Id: 21cNaGc9XDQ

Length: 89min 20sec (5360 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/mossyandtangle]

This was really interesting, thank you for posting it. As a life-long dancer, I would have jumped at the chance to have been part of the "cast."

[u/elmartin93]

Hmmm, do catch up on my massive pop culture media back log, or watch this for the third time this month? Fetch me my dancing slippers