Emberley Hall

In 1897, where did Lillie Langtry finally divorce her husband Edward?

1 day ago | [YT] | 3

Emberley Hall

The research notes behind this week's episode ran to about 21,400 words. Most of it never made the cut. A few things we found and could not fit:

• Lillie Langtry raced horses as "Mr Jersey", because a woman could not register a horse in her own name. Her colt Milford won the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1892.

• The etiquette manual told hostesses to invite more gentlemen than ladies, "in order that the married ladies should not be obliged to go in to dinner with each other's husbands only."

• In one 1860s divorce, the court settled £2,500 on the guilty wife for life, on condition she lived chastely. Her former husband asked to add the words "and unmarried". The court refused.

• Walton Hall, Sir Charles Mordaunt's house, was rebuilt for him by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the architect of St Pancras.

• Violet, the baby at the centre of the Mordaunt case, grew up to be Marchioness of Bath, mistress of Longleat. The peerage names her mother. It does not name her father.

One popular story we checked and dropped: the Bournemouth house "Edward Langtry built for Lillie". It was built in 1877 by Emily Caroline Langton Massingberd. The stone reads E.L.L. 1877, her initials, and a hotel misread them in 1938.

Which of these would you have wanted in the episode?

The full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPaRG...

Picture: Edward John Poynter, Mrs Langtry, 1877.

2 days ago | [YT] | 21

Emberley Hall

A father in Lydia's day could sue the man who seduced his daughter. In law, what was he suing for?

Not sure? The answer is in the full episode: https://youtu.be/XUhy3xIl47w

3 days ago | [YT] | 15

Emberley Hall

Every girl in Lydia's position had been warned. John Gregory's A Father's Legacy to His Daughters stayed in print all through Austen's life, and it told young women that an "artful man" could fake every sign of love "so as easily to impose on a young girl of an open, generous, and feeling heart, if she is not extremely on her guard."

Her father had been warned too. Elizabeth went to him before Brighton and laid out the risk in detail. He let Lydia go anyway.

Some readers see a plot against Darcy in what Wickham did next. We looked hard at that and couldn't make it fit. Elizabeth was "certain that his flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity of having a companion." Debts, not revenge.

What came after the wedding is the part every adaptation skips, and it's the whole of our episode:
https://youtu.be/XUhy3xIl47w

(The painting is Georg Friedrich Kersting's At the Mirror, 1827.)

4 days ago | [YT] | 33

Emberley Hall

A Victorian doctor's advice book told one kind of wife she "must have a separate sleeping apartment". Which wife?

6 days ago | [YT] | 9

Emberley Hall

Our Victorian separate bedrooms episode runs twenty-two minutes. The research behind it ran to about 21,000 words. A few things that didn't make the cut:

• When Warwick Castle caught fire in December 1871, The Times described the second floor: "Lady Warwick's bedroom and dressing-room, and Lord Warwick's dressing-room." One bedroom, and a dressing room each.

• Pye Henry Chavasse, the doctor who told wives when to sleep apart, did not want a husband at the birth. "Certainly not." Once it was over, though, he was to see his wife at once, "to whisper in her ear words of affection, of gratitude, and consolation."

• At Darwin's house in Kent, the 1882 valuation puts the lady's maid on the family floor, in a room with a fireplace, green damask curtains and a mahogany wardrobe. Her bed was an "iron folding bedstead".

• Loudon's 1833 plans for two ploughmen's cottages mark a place for the bride's chest of drawers, "always a part of her dowry, and made of mahogany".

And one we checked and dropped: that Florence Nightingale told couples to sleep in separate beds. Her "two bedsteads" were for one patient, twelve hours in each. She wrote about the sick and about children, never about married couples.

Which one would you have kept in the episode?

Picture: Sir Edwin Landseer, Windsor Castle in Modern Times, 1841 to 1845.

1 week ago | [YT] | 20

Emberley Hall

Jane Austen turned down the kind of offer Charlotte Lucas took. Our research notes for the Charlotte episode ran to about 44,000 words, and this is the part that didn't fit.

Family tradition says that in December 1802, nearly 27, Austen accepted a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, heir to Manydown, and withdrew it the next morning. No letter of hers mentions it. The story comes from one 1870 letter by her niece Caroline, born three years after it happened, and that letter's original is lost.

What she walked away from is on paper, though. His marriage settlement of 1804, made for the woman he did marry, gave his wife £400 a year for life. The richest rectory near Hunsford was worth about that.

Austen's own accounts for 1807 survive at the Morgan Library: £42 4s 8d for the whole year. £13 19s 3d on clothes, £3 10s 3d on charity.

Caroline's verdict: "most young women so circumstanced would have taken Mr W."

Would you have?

Picture: Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at a Window, 1822.

1 week ago | [YT] | 35

Emberley Hall

The research notes for our Victorian courtship episode ran to about 13,000 words. Here is what didn't fit:

• Some valentines were picture puzzles. One postmarked 14 February 1820 reads "Eye Hope Yew… Inn Letter Toe Yew".

• An 1841 letter-writing guide begged anyone crossing their letters (writing a second layer across the first) to "vary the colour of the ink". By 1892 another guide called crossing "a practice of the past, now happily discontinued".

• Love letters could end up read aloud in court. In breach-of-promise suits, the most tender passages were read to the jury, and drew roars of laughter.

• Decades before the famous fan "code" was sold, 1790s "conversation fans" printed their code right on the fan. A party game, in plain sight.

• The perfumer Eugène Rimmel scented his valentines, and at his height employed about 150 women to decorate them by hand.

And one we checked and dropped: that the flower dictionary was the most common book in Victorian homes after the Bible. We could not find a single source for it.

Would you rather receive a crossed letter or a scented valentine?

Picture: William Powell Frith, At the Opera, 1855.

1 week ago | [YT] | 13

Emberley Hall

Our Regency marriage market episode had twenty minutes. The research notes ran to about 16,000 words. A few things that didn't make the cut:

• Being presented at court was an ordeal. A young woman curtsied to the Queen, then walked backwards out of the room while managing her train. Most women were presented only three times in their lives: at their debut, at their marriage, and when a husband received an honour.

• In June 1820, George IV abolished hoops at court. He loved ostrich feathers, and asked for more of them instead.

• Almack's shut its doors at midnight, with one exception: members of either House of Parliament. The patronesses kept having to turn away their own husbands.

• The period slang for a woman who never married was "ape-leader", from the old saying that spinsters would lead apes in hell.

And one we went looking for and threw out: that Queen Charlotte crowned a "diamond of the first water" every Season. Bridgerton's own historical consultant says the phrase was never used to single out one young woman.

Which of these surprised you most?

Picture: Sir Thomas Lawrence, Emily Mary Lamb, 1803.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 11

Emberley Hall

Something is coming to Emberley Hall.

Picture it. A ballroom lit by hundreds of candles. White gloves. A girl of nineteen at the edge of the floor, in a gown that cost more than her maid earned in a year.

We've all seen that scene a hundred times. In the novels, on screen, in our daydreams.

But what was really going on in that room? And what became of the girls who left it without a husband?

Our very first documentary steps onto the floor of the Regency marriage market. The rules of the ballroom. The money behind every dance. And the quiet clock every young woman could hear ticking.

Some of it will feel wonderfully familiar. Some of it might surprise you.

Coming soon.

Until then, a little question for you. If you'd been a debutante in 1815, would you have loved the Season or dreaded it? Do tell us below. ☕

With love,
Emberley Hall Team

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4