At some point a delegation of readers of this blog will march in righteous fury to my house, take my kindle from my hands and somehow block my ability to read Jane Austen fan fic.
I know it, you know it, the cats probably know it.
Honestly, it’s mostly that right now I have so many sources of stress, most of which I can’t do anything about, that it’s something I can read without paying much attention to it, set down and pick up without much thought, and not worry about. It is in its way the equivalent of the bland, tasteless, vaguely sweet foods to which I’ve been inclining as well: it fits the purpose without adding more stimulus that I have no emotional space for.
And yes, of course, I do adjust my standards accordingly. I know most of the women reading this have never studied history and could care less. And I don’t particularly mind, unless the world building is so absurd that everyone is a Lord or a Lady, or some such thing.
I do realize most people reading and maybe writing it are perfectly fine with the duchess getting out the gig to go shop for groceries at the local market.
My tolerance is broad, and I roll my eyes at people who comment that the book is dead to them because it has three typos.
While on that, if you read that kind of thing, I highly recommend The Bachelor Mr. Darcy. The setting is “regency romance” not regency, but within that the story is well told and believable-ish. I enjoyed it.
However, there are stories I start to read that get returned with profound disgust because they are broken at a more fundamental level. And which upset me, not because the poor writer meant to, but because it betrays to what extent we’re losing the past, and the understanding of what made our civilization.
One such, recently, was the one in which Elizabeth Bennet is the first person Mr. Darcy EVER heard speak of the plight of the less fortunate or broach the idea that those who had plenty should help them. It rocked Mr. Darcy’s world to have someone tell him that people of high class and distinction should engage in charity.
I’d hit my head against my desk but it would probably break it in two, and I promised Dan not to do that again.
Seriously? An eighteenth century, well brought up man, had never heard of being kind to the less fortunate? Charity just wasn’t “done” in his circles?
I don’t really require people writing Jane Austen fan fic to have carefully analyzed the writings of her contemporaries, but would maybe a glancing look at her writing, or perhaps an internet search on how charity was done in the 18th century be helpful? Particularly if your entire book is going to be about what I’m very sure you call in your own head “social justice” but you think that the people at the time might call “charity.”
I am sick an tired not only of people who think our time is not just the moral pinnacle of civilization, but the only one in which people strove for a moral life, but also who think they’re the first people to preach tolerance or charity or something in writing.
I would like to introduce them — which is a nice term for smack them upside their rock hard heads — with grandma’s collection of Victorian literature, which was all about do gooders doing good and talking about doing good and encouraging the readers to do good.
Though the manifestation and details of that good might shock the current little do gooders, I suspect the experience would be salutary, as it might give them a sense for how … common their concerns are, and how no one really will praise them for ever and ever, and in fact their granddaughters will pretend this never happened and they’re the first to feel concern for the poor or people discriminated against for racial (seriously, how much must you strain to inject that into Regency England. They were more likely to discriminate against their tenants because, if nothing else, they were more commonly available), class, poverty or disability, or other reasons.
More importantly, I would like the current generation of zealots to be aware that the society two centuries back was molded and fashioned on Christian virtue.
And though most people probably gave it no more than the lip service the current generation gives to socialist virtue, the point is that they gave it exactly that degree of credit and effort.
It’s always difficult to know if people really mean what they talk about, even in our day, much less when they’ve been moldering in the grave for a couple of hundred years. But there were private letters between close friends and family members, people who had no reason to try to impress each other, exhorting each other to greater Christian virtue, including, yes, charity. And letters and diaries from people angsting that perhaps they were not as perfectly charitable as they would like to be.
Heck, even for people like me who are believers, some of the “in the weeds” obsession with being good Christians of the people in the Regency and Victorians seem quite out of proportion and a little strange.
Yes, their idea of charity was slightly different from ours. They refused to help those they thought might waste the opportunity, aka “the undeserving poor.” While this might seem like an excuse not to help a woman who had “fallen” once, or whatever, most of the time it wasn’t like that. People were given opportunities, but at some point were given up on. For clarification, read the histories of Jack the Ripper’s victims.
No, not saying they deserved to die in that horrible way, but they belonged to a certain group that will be immediately recognizable, and all of them had wasted several opportunities to pull up out of the gutter. Now I think about it, though paying lip service to deserving versus undeserving poor, Victorian do-gooders were just as bad as present-day do gooders in throwing good money after lost causes. They were just perhaps less likely to demand the government do it for them.
Anyway, it offends me at a very deep level — much deeper than calling everyone Lord and Lady or sending the duchess off to shop, in her little gig –to have this feeling that these young women are standing on a pedestal and trying to look down at their ancestors, from their supposed moral height, when the ancestors were at least as morally good and perhaps better.
Yes, I do in fact realize that most people reading JAFF wouldn’t know how strange the idea is that an upper class man of the regency would never have considered being charitable to the less fortunate. But that is sort of the point. Writing a book like the one I returned with prejudice only encourages people to go on thinking their generation invented kindness and charity.
And I thought it was bad enough when they believed they’d invented sex.
Mad Genius Club 
59 responses to “Touch And Feel”
Here’s a useful stick to beat that particular kind of ignorami with, especially the part about his concern for his tenants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fitzwilliam,_4th_Earl_Fitzwilliam
Yep. I know.
In every civilization in every era on Earth some people believed their time was not just the moral pinnacle of civilization, but the only one in which people strove for a moral life. Look at the Ancient Greeks for example.
Those people in our times are annoying, but just like the Four Horsemen, they have always been there. We are not unique.
And then there are their brothers, who bemoan the current times and point back to the Golden Age when everything was wonderful, all children were obedient, everyone followed all the laws, and no natural disaster ever befell society. “Kids these days!” or “In the days of King Numa Pompilius …” And it’s been downhill ever since.
“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”
My least favorite Austen hero explaining to his love interest that Englishmen do not murder their wives, with a chorus of Golden Age Detective fiction readers laughing and pointing at him from the future.
Well, they don’t murder them like the villains of Regency-era Gothics.
Depends on the definition of “do it for them”.
There’s a reason “Christmas Carol” has Scrooge asking “are there no prisons or workhouses?” Courts could require you to use both. They could also send you to serve a term in the Army or Navy as enlisted. (We did that here until at least the 1960s, at least “unofficially”.) Finally, “transportation” was a thing; you were given a free ticket to Australia or one of the other colonies, also as a sentence.
How much those count as “government programs” is left to the judgement of the reader.
The Regency still opted for outdoor relief with all its humiliating means testing. It was still public.
OTOH, Emma thinks “The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. “
The ticket wasn’t free. You were indentured and sold to pay your passage.
In some cases, yes.
Shoot, even his aunt, Lady Catherine whatsername, was big on charity and helping the poor. The ungrateful poor didn’t always appreciate it, but no one could say she didn’t do her part.
Precisely.
I’m not exactly a scholar on a lot of eras, but I do know that very few of them were as bad as our current Moral Superiors think they were.
And they would have done better had the circumstances allowed for it.
A lot of them are really clueless about just how stinking rich the 21st century is.
They don’t want to have a clue, because if they did, they would realize just how lucky they are and any complaints they have would be petty in comparison.
And nobody likes things being petty towards them.
Nor are they as bad as our Moral Superiors really are.
And that’s before you factor in that our Moral Superiors have far more resources.
Sadly, our Moral Superiors have far too much free time to be all Morally Superior on us because we have so much more wealth…
I know those books–where every bachelor is a duke, and every lady is a CEO in the making. Not that I admit to reading them.
My favorite are the ones where doctor is a prestigious position….
Good lord – assuming that the Georgians and Victorians were barely interested in charity and taking an interest in the well-being of their tenants … that’s sad. Sad and not very well versed in the mores, manners, interests and practices of the period. It’s not the awfullest mis-reading of a historical period that I have ever read, but it does come close.
A Serious Call To A Devout and Holy Life is before this era, but it offers a sample of what they would consider an exemplary life of good works — and this from a woman with two hundred pounds a year:
To relate her charity, would be to relate the history of every day for twenty years; for so long has all her fortune been spent that way. She has set up near twenty poor tradesmen that had failed in their business, and saved as many from failing. She has educated several poor children, that were picked up in the streets, and put them in a way of an honest employment. As soon as any labourer is confined at home with sickness, she sends him, till he recovers, twice the value of his wages, that he may have one part to give to his family as usual, and the other to provide things convenient for his sickness.
In a family seems too large to be supported by the labour of those that can work in it, she pays their rent, and gives them something yearly towards their clothing. By this means, there are several poor families that live in a comfortable manner, and are from year to year blessing her in their prayers.
If there is any poor man or woman that is more than ordinarily wicked and reprobate, Miranda has her eye upon them; she watches their time of need and adversity; and if she can discover that they are in any great straits, or affliction, she gives them speedy relief. She has this care for this sort of people, because she once saved a very profligate person from being carried to prison, who immediately became a true penitent.
There is nothing in the character of Miranda more to be admired than this temper. For this tenderness of affection towards the most abandoned sinners is the highest instance of a Divine and God-like soul.
Miranda once passed by a house, where the man and his wife were cursing and swearing at one another in a most dreadful manner, and three children crying about them: this sight so much affected her compassionate mind, that she went the next day, and bought the three children, that they might not be ruined by living with such wicked parents; they now live with Miranda, are blessed with her care and prayers, and all the good works which she can do for them. They hear her talk, they see her live, they join with her in psalms and prayers. The eldest of them has already converted his parents from their wicked life, and shows a turn of mind so remarkably pious, that Miranda intends him for holy orders; that, being thus saved himself, he may be zealous in the salvation of souls, and do to other miserable objects as she has done to him.
Miranda is a constant relief to poor people in their misfortunes and accidents: there are sometimes little misfortunes that happen to them, which of themselves they could never be able to overcome. The death of a cow or a horse, or some little robbery, would keep them in distress all their lives. She does not suffer them to grieve under such accidents as these. She immediately gives them the full value of their loss, and makes use of it as a means of raising their minds towards God.
She has a great tenderness for old people that are grown past their labour. The parish allowance to such people is very seldom a comfortable maintenance: for this reason they are the constant objects of her care: she adds so much to their allowance, as somewhat exceeds the wages they got when they were young. This she does to comfort the infirmities of their age, that, being free from trouble and distress, they may serve God in peace and tranquillity of mind. She has generally a large number of this kind, who, by her charities and exhortations to holiness, spend their last days in great piety and devotion.
Miranda never wants compassion, even to common beggars; especially towards those that are old or sick, or full of sores, that want eyes or limbs. She hears their complaints with tenderness, gives them some proof of her kindness, and never rejects them with hard or reproachful language, for fear of adding affliction to her fellow-creatures.
If a poor old traveller tells her that he has neither strength, nor food, nor money left, she never bids him go to the place from whence he came, or tells him that she cannot relieve him, because he may be a cheat, or she does not know him; but she relieves him for that reason, because he is a stranger and unknown to her. For it is the most noble part of charity to be kind and tender to those whom we never saw before, and perhaps never may see again in this life. “I was a stranger, and ye took me in,” [Matt. xxv. 43] saith our blessed Saviour: but who can perform this duty, that will not relieve persons that are unknown to him?
Miranda considers that Lazarus was a common beggar, that he was the care of Angels, and carried into Abraham’s bosom. She considers that our blessed Saviour and His Apostles were kind to beggars; that they spoke comfortably to them, healed their diseases, and restored eyes and limbs to the lame and blind; that Peter said to the beggar that wanted an alms from him, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” [Acts iii. 6] Miranda, therefore, never treats beggars with disregard and aversion; but she imitates the kindness of our Saviour and His Apostles towards them; and though she cannot, like them, work miracles for their relief, yet she relieves them with that power that she hath; and may say, with the Apostle, “Such as I have give I thee, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
It may be, says Miranda, that I may often give to those that do not deserve it, or that will make an ill use of my alms. But what then? Is not this the very method of Divine goodness? Does not God make “His sun to rise on the evil and on the good”? [Matt. v. 45] Is not this the very goodness that is recommended to us in Scripture, that, by imitating of it, we may be children of our Father which is in Heaven, who “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”? And shall I withhold a little money, or food, from my fellow-creature, for fear he should not be good enough to receive it of me? Do I beg of God to deal with me, not according to my merit, but according to His own great goodness; and shall I be so absurd as to withhold my charity from a poor brother, because he may perhaps not deserve it? Shall I use a measure towards him, which I pray God never to use towards me?
She sounds liker a fine lady. I’m sorry to say that I’ve known people, some of them self-professed millionaires, who would sniff and say that she’s just tying to buy her way into Heaven with false charity. Because all Christian charity is phony and it’s only done to get brownie points with God.
That sterling wisdom came from a man who identified as an atheist Buddhist, had a million dollars in property in LA, and said that peasant dirt farmers in African and Haiti were less oppressed than he was because he lived in Southern California.
I seem to remember someone saying, “Why was all that perfume wasted? It could have been sold for a lot of money to give to the poor…” and the response was, “The poor you will always have with you and you can do good to them whenever you like.” That was two thousand years ago.
And while St Matthew, former tax collector, cynically assumes his readers will work out the cui bono implications for themselves; St John flat out tells us Judas was embezzling from the funds.
That’s the part that always gets to me: debatably the only time in history that you can say Real Christianity was being practiced, with God Himself literally right there among them, and there was STILL corruption.
From the parable of the beggar named Lazarus and the rich man who disdained him in life: “And (the rich man) said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send (Lazarus) to my father’s house, for I have five brethren, That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance. And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.”
Foreshadowing Christ’s own death and resurrection of course.
Even with the best of possible examples in front of them, humans are still going to human, and some are thieving jerks.
I have faith that Engineer Cat and his minions will shield you and keep you relatively safe
Indy has more minions than just his sister? Guest kittens, maybe?
Only the Shado…Engineer Cat knows.
two sisters. Circe and Muse.
Right, I remembered Circe and forgot about Muse, sorry.
I can throw no stones on the fanfic reading. I’ve been poking bits like this.
I haven’t seen the whole movie, and I’ve heard one of the main character’s intro makes any sane military type facepalm, but watching characters take the U.S.S. Missouri up against space aliens definitely helps a stressed brain….
We showed this movie to my grandmother, who has little interest in SF/F, solely because of the Missouri scenes (her late husband, my grandfather, served above an Iowa class battleship in WWII.)
I am not one of those who would take away your fan-fic. It is a harmless thing to do when you are upset at the world. Take it away, and who knows what you would do!
I have much the same thing. Retreating into an inner world is far better than what I might do if I allow my annoyance to be used to affect the outer world. Parts of it definitely would not survive the experience.
Before the Covidiocy took fair hold, and cancelled all gatherings (save those which burned down neighborhoods) I was a participant in the yearly Word Wrangler event, in the lovely little town of Giddings, Texas. Part of the Thursday-Friday-& Weekend festivities included a chance for various Texas local authors to visit local school classes and talk to students. I went to a 5th grade English class (I think several of them, in sequence) and talked about writing and telling stories. I told the kids that IT WAS PERFECTLY OK TO WRITE FAN-FIC. It was like having training wheels on a bicycle. You love and understand the characters, and the general setting has already been outline for you – so go ahead, have fun with plotting new adventures for them! It’s excellent practice in learning to write fiction! Go for it, kids!
I suppose, since it was 5th graders, that admonitions to learn a bit of anatomy and biology before using fanfiction to inflict their adolescent sexual angst on the world would have been out of place.
(I kid, I kid! …mostly.)
Speaking of Regency fanfic…..
Look what just showed up on DriveThruRPG:
Now I’m imagining a story where it’s either Harry Flashman or Jeeves and Bertie Wooster defeating some eldritch threat to English civilization.
I started reading one Regency Mystery series but stopped reading it.
The main character is an Acknowledged Bastard but apparently is the illegitimate son of the wife of a Nobleman who was married to the father of the man’s half-brothers.
While he’s the youngest of the brothers, there was still talk about him taking the title of his “father”
Since his oldest brother (who currently has the noble title of their “father”) is gay, there was a plot concerning a possible son of the middle brother (presumed dead).
Apparently, the boy was the son of the middle brother, but was born out-of-wedlock. But since the middle brother had written an acknowledgement of the boy being his son, apparently the boy can inherit his grandfather’s title.
Which is contrary IMO to what I know about English Noble Inheritance laws in that time period.
On top of that, the main character’s “Lady Love” has informed him that she’ll never marry because “having children” is deadly. (Note due being held captive by the French, the main character is impotent.)
Now, I’m sure pregnancy as a cause of death was more common in the Regency period than now, it seemed to be an unreasonable fear but was accepted by the main character.
And there were other situations in the series that seemed to reflect the attitudes of the author rather than what the Regency period was actually like.
The mother’s husband is the putative father. At that time, always.
This is why one Victorian lady remembered being told to never comment on a likeness. (I ran with that in Never Comment On A Likeness. You may approve.)
Yes, but the Main Character was told (by his “father”) that he was an acknowledged Bastard.
I doubt that was common and I got the impression that his status was known to others.
Oh absolutely. That was actually a legal document, which determined things like possibility of inheritance, what your position in the line was (if you were acknowledged, your younger brother who thought he was next — isn’t. Wars began that way.)
The “never comment on a likeness” thing was that it was rude to observe that the youngest son had brown eyes when all his brothers and sisters had blue ones. And that was Victorian. The entire tale of *A Prisoner Of Zenda* turns on the hero being an illegitimate cousin of the king, hence the resemblance — and there it was the firstborn who was bound to inherit.
It was well-known enough that the father might have ensured the boy could not be blind-sided. (Depends on how it’s handled.)
Bastards were often acknowledged. It was fairly common. I SUSPECT what they meant was “legitimized bastard” which was rare and could only be done by an act of parliament.
Or maybe they were just confused.
I could believe the author was confused.
Of course, I might be the confused person. [Crazy Grin]
Normally an acknowledged bastard is acknowledged by his actual father. And usually it can be done only for bastards born by fornication.
I thought only royalty got away with elevating bastards.
From what’s been said here, any noble could acknowledge one of his bastards as his son or daughter.
But to make the bastard one of his heirs would take an act of Parliament.
Now, a sufficiently high up noble might arrange for his bastard to have a rank of nobility without making the bastard an heir.
Much depends on the era. In the Regency, well, we have discussion between Boswell and Johnson about the duty to provide for those whose existence we are responsible for, but you can not elevate them to the status of your legitimate heirs. (Except in Scotland, where if you and other parents were able to marry at the time of the child’s birth, and did later marry, you retroactively legitimated them.)
That author broke immersion in chapter 1, book 1 for me when she thought unicorns were a little-girl thing in the regency. Mythical animals were namechecked by every erudite person, and the mere existence of a few bestiary type books for children that included mythical beasts as well as real ones doesn’t mean people of the Georgian and Regency would have understood this joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8EFVDq0crs
“However, there are stories I start to read that get returned with profound disgust because they are broken at a more fundamental level. And which upset me, not because the poor writer meant to, but because it betrays to what extent we’re losing the past, and the understanding of what made our civilization.”
Well, with a sci-fi or fantasy book, the author can make themselves out to be the first to notice such things that were forgotten. The author creates a world where no one knows how things should be, but the self-inserted writer who teaches the poor benighted characters all that is good, true and right. Then, they slap their heads and and say they never knew. Then, they make him their king and he gets the hottest looking, biggest boobed of all the princesses as a wife and everything works out for the best because the evil Trumperor who kept this information from the people gets thrown into prison forever. The end.
Not being familiar with Victorian fiction I am curious if the do gooder ideological themes/ideas are as in your face as Libertarian ideological/message fiction is. Say L.Neil Smith territory?
NO. Much more in your face than that. And at the end they have a “Moral: “moral stated outright”” in case you’re really dense.
Yes, I still read it. I read everything.
Mr. Darcy would have had to pay his local parish’s Poor rates to help maintain the poor who lived within the parish boundaries.
And that was just the beginning. At his level in society he probably supported several marginal tenant families out of his own purse, etc.
If we knew each other I’d send you a little book I think you’d like. Maybe when I’m through this season of life I’ll have a mutual friend get it to you. But IDK how long I’m to be here for. If you feel so inclined, look up “A Christmas Journey” by Anne Perry. Don’t let the title put you off. And don’t look up the Author’s sordid past. At least not til after you’ve read it. It’s a short novel. My copy is only 180 pages of fairly decent sized font with gobs of margin. It’s a great one to stay up all night reading when you can’t get to sleep. It starts slow and seems like it’s gonna be a trite romp through the drawing room. But that’s setting you up for the contrast. Especially suitable to read by candlelight.