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The Nonesuch
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The Nonesuch Oct 2019 Group Read Chapters 1-10
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Yes, good observation! At what point of 'desperation' would an 'upper class' person bite the bullet and enter (shock horror!) TRADE??!!!One of the few 'respectable' ways seems to have been to join the East India Company....though, as in the case of (view spoiler) you had to be 'packed off' to India in the first place!!
I wonder what made 'John Company' (why was it called that? Was it maybe as in 'John Bull Company'....aka 'England'??) 'respectable? Was it because it was (a)abroad (so no one in England could see you getting your hands dirty with trade! and/or (b) it was 'imperial' and about 'ruling foreigners' etc etc??
It also seemed to be socially acceptable to be a naval officer and get rich through prize money (helping yourself to the freight on enemy ships!), as Captain Wentworth did in Persuasian?
Yes, good observation! At what point of 'desperation' would an 'upper class' person bite the bullet and enter (shock horror!) TRADE??!!!One of the few 'respectable' ways seems to have been to join the East India Company....though, as in the case of (view spoiler) you had to be 'packed off' to India in the first place!!
I wonder what made 'John Company' (why was it called that? Was it maybe as in 'John Bull Company'....aka 'England'??) 'respectable? Was it because it was (a)abroad (so no one in England could see you getting your hands dirty with trade! and/or (b) it was 'imperial' and about 'ruling foreigners' etc etc??
It also seemed to be socially acceptable to be a naval officer and get rich through prize money (helping yourself to the freight on enemy ships!), as Captain Wentworth did in Persuasian?
PS - It also seems to have been socially acceptable to own land that happened to have coal underneath it (!), or to cut a canal across your land and charge tolls (and later on to be paid by railway companies to let them lay track across your land).
Beth-In-UK wrote: "PS - It also seems to have been socially acceptable to own land that happened to have coal underneath it (!), or to cut a canal across your land and charge tolls (and later on to be paid by railway..."As long as you didn't actually get your hands dirty, of course! Part of what Julia found distasteful in Adam's farming in A Civil Contract was that he wore a farmer's smock and actually ... labored!
Chapter 9: In which Patience becomes a heroine and Tiffany shows what a spoiled brat she is. I can honestly say I can understand Tiffany's feelings and at that age I probably would have vented to my mom about how awful the situation was and she would have reacted like Mrs. Underhill and I would have sulked. However, to behave as Tiffany does in PUBLIC? I hope I would have known better than that. I think Julian is pretty much done with her and really appreciating Patience's good sense. Like Anne Elliot in Persuasion, she's capable and dependable. Tiffany is just a brat. We see Ancilla starting to come undone in this crisis. She's stretched thin and even her good sense can't save Tiffany from almost making a scene. I find it interesting that an older man like Waldo (36 OMG he's ANCIENT!) can drive a young girl in his carriage with a servant and be trusted. Ancilla knows how he feels about Tiffany but I think I would not put it past Tiffany to attempt to seduce HIM.
Interesting point about girls going around with men in public. I think if there were a servant of your own (eg, a groom when you were out riding on your own) it was OK - but in practice of course a servant of the man could be hand in glove with abducting you.I suppose if you were 'visible' in public, even if only by farm workers, it was 'OK'?
I can remember reading an amusing comment about how it was, apparently, in Victorian times, quite OK for a young, single woman to (of all things!) travel by train if she were in the horse-compartment with her own horse (that, apparently, was fairly common in hunting circles - you would take your horse by train to the hunt, if you were too far away from the Meet, because you didn't want to tire the horse out with a long journey before the hunt started!)(a bit like in Texas etc, where they load their saddled horse on to the trailer to drive them off to the cattle to round up miles away across the ranch)(I know that because I watch The Pioneer Woman on the Food Channel here!!).....
The argument was that any man rash enough to try and seduce a woman in her riding habit, while she was in the company of a very fierce hunter, would have been pretty much suicidal!!!!!
I started today. Finally!! Hooked already (of course). So looking forward to the read.
Teresa wrote: "I started today. Finally!! Hooked already (of course). So looking forward to the read."Hooray, Teresa!
I am having trouble thinking of a horse as fierce...hunter or no. but then, I was a city girl.
Jackie wrote: "I am having trouble thinking of a horse as fierce...hunter or no. but then, I was a city girl."Horses are big, and when they get cranky, Shazam! (I hadn't ever read that about Victorian misses, Beth!)
Horses can be fierce or proud or sweet or grumpy or ambivalent! (reporting from horse country)
Karlyne wrote: "Jackie wrote: "I am having trouble thinking of a horse as fierce...hunter or no. but then, I was a city girl."Horses are big, and when they get cranky, Shazam!"
Indeed. Never sneak up on a horse, especially when it is in a small, enclosed area.
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Giving a thing (or a category of person) a common human name to personalise it wasn't unusual - and 'John' or 'Johnny' or 'Jack' were popular ones to choose. The French were 'Johnny Crapaud'; foreigners in general could be 'Johnny Foreigner'; a popular song personified barley as 'John Barleycorn'; the Americans were 'Cousin Jonathan'; then you've got 'Jack Frost', 'Jenny Wren', 'Robin Redbreast' (the bird was originally the redbreast, but the nickname stuck) and all the animals whose sexes are distinguished by using personal names - Jill/Hob for ferrets, Jack/Jenny for donkeys, Nanny/Billy for goats.
...It also seemed to be socially acceptable to be a naval officer and get rich through prize money (helping yourself to the freight on enemy ships!), as Captain Wentworth did in Persuasian?..."
Oh no, you're thinking of privateers, not the Navy! It was the captured ships themselves that were the prizes, and they were bought by the Navy at official rates. No doubt in the heat of battle stray odds and ends of personal belongings got snapped up by any crewman that had the opportunity, but the captain of a warship could hardly transfer whole cargoes from an enemy ship to his own.
Capturing an enemy ship wasn't remotely considered stealing, and paying prize money was a way of encouraging it as a means of adding to your country's own fleet.
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I thought it was odd that Patience could go off with Mr Baldock - a complete stranger -in his tilbury with no other chaperone than Lindeth and the injured urchin! I know Ancilla promised to follow as soon as she could, but even so I would have expected Lindeth and Mr Baldock to have taken the child to the infirmary: they didn't actually need Patience along, after all, and surely it would have been more proper for Ancilla to have stayed with both girls? It would have messed up the plot though!
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As Amanda points out in Sprig Muslin! Or rather as Sir Gareth points out when Amanda tries to enlist his groom's support against him.
It's interesting, though, isn't it, that Courtenay, as her cousin, is considered an adequate chaperon for Tiffany, even though he's also considered an eligible candidate for her hand. I suppose it would be because, as a close family member, her honour would be considered as his own.
This section ends with the reappearance of Laurie. I forgot about him. I don't like his personality and I'm not sure if Waldo was fair or mean (view spoiler) I think these two men just don't get along because their personalities are different. It's interesting to see the contrast between Laurie's dandyism and The Nonesuch's style. Laurie seems more like how Courtenay and the other young men pictured Waldo.
I'm getting a late start this month. I was binge-reading a series, and just couldn't bear to put it down! HOWEVER...I got started yesterday, and while not quite caught up, am sufficiently into things to be reminded of just how much I like this book. Sir Waldo is everything you could ask for in a hero, and Ancilla is a woman of intellect, good sense, deep understanding and remarkable humor.
Critterbee❇ wrote: "Horses can be fierce or proud or sweet or grumpy or ambivalent! (reporting from horse country)"
well, that makes sense.
And never go round the back of a horse - it's where they kick from! If you've ever seen footage of two stallions fighting, it is really vicious. They can, indeed, be extremely aggressive.
And being 'ridden down' by one is pretty scary - there's a reason there are mounted police when it comes to riots and so on!
Jenny, thank you re prize money. I've never really known where the prize money actually came from - so from what you say it is that a captured enemy ship was basically taken over by the British navy and refitted as 'British' (why waste a good ship!), and then the officers of the capturing ship got a share of its value from the navy itself (and I think even the men did as well?)Is that how it worked?
Re prize money still, I've always found it quite shocking in a way, how, in Persuasion, when Captain Wentworth is dining with the Musgraves how he openly praises one of the ships he commanded (possibly the Laconia?) as being a brilliant ship for him as he made so much money during his command of her. He's quite blatant about it!
Jenny - my favourite has to be 'Johnny Foreigner' ....it just sums up the British attitude to 'abroad' in general!!! :)
Jenny - yes, I think Ancilla feels the full force of being the only 'chaperone on the scene', and I suppose her prime 'charge' is Tiffany, rather than Patience?It's an awkward situation for her, no doubt.
Beth-In-UK wrote: "I wonder what made 'John Company' (why was it called that? Was it maybe as in 'John Bull Company'....aka 'England'??) 'respectable? Was it because it was (a)abroad (so no one in England could see you getting your hands dirty with trade!"I think the answer is (a) abroad!
I get the impression that the same rule applied to money as to sex. Aristocrats were always having crim. con.s and affairs, but they were accepted as long as they were discrete. The same for working, if you did it discretely abroad then it was ok.
I also get the impression that being in the East India company wasn't 'respectable' as such (any historians help me out!). Eg. when you read something like The Secret Garden, it's pretty obvious that Mary's parents are considered ramshackle, irresponsible, selfish people. I think people looked down on those kinds of overseas adventurers, but they were so rich they could buy acceptance.
Jenny wrote: "they didn't actually need Patience along, after all, and surely it would have been more proper for Ancilla to have stayed with both girls?"Wasn't it a general assumption that no man was capable of caring for a child, injured or otherwise, with any competence? Only a woman could fulfill that role?
I think I can see why it was considered acceptable for a lady to drive about in a tilbury or phaeton with a gentleman. They're absolutely open to view: one sits nearly 8ft in the air in a phaeton, and the seats are so small there's no space for any kind of hanky-panky. Nothing at all like Madame Bovary and her closed carriages!
Teresa wrote: "I started today. Finally!! Hooked already (of course). So looking forward to the read."Oh enjoy, it is a breath of fresh air no matter how many times I read, and now listen, to it! I am becoming a huge fan of audiobooks for our Heyer reads, her dialogue just sparkles with the right reader! I am reminded of the hilarious Cary Grant- Katharine Hepburn movies my mom got us hooked on years ago...
Rebecca wrote: "I'm getting a late start this month. I was binge-reading a series, and just couldn't bear to put it down! HOWEVER...I got started yesterday, and while not quite caught up, am sufficiently into thin..."I agree on all counts...
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Wasn't it a general assumption that no man was capable of caring for a child, injured or otherwise, with any competence? Only a woman could fulfill that role?..."
Yes, on second thoughts I think you're right: it's easy nowadays to overlook how very segregated gender roles were even a generation or so ago, let alone a couple of hundred years. I expect Lindeth and Mr Baldock would have felt they needed a woman for such a job, much as a woman (or a lady anyway) would have felt she needed a man for a lot of purposes.
Yes, I agree re John Company being safely 'abroad'! Maybe too there was the indication that it was a place for Remittance Men - ie, those who were paid to go abroad by their families after they'd created a scandal in the UK (eg, Miles in Black Sheep!). I don't know how the EIC worked in terms of who could 'join'....I suspect a pretty hefty 'joining fee' would have been required, considering how lucrative the whole thing was out in India??In respect of the Secret Garden, however, I rather thought Mary's father was a soldier, wasn't he? I think too it was set during the Raj, ie, post 1857 Indian Mutiny, but, again, they were definitely 'rackety people', her parents, and I also think that even during the Raj there was a fair amount of 'goings on'! Especially when the wives were sent 'upcountry' to Simla during the heat of the summer season. I think it could get pretty, ah, Bohemian up in the cooler hills!
Again, as ever, the keyword was 'discretion' and not turning it into 'scandal'.
Re prize money - I like that it included a share for the seamen as well. I hope some of them made a bit of money to compensate for the horror of being pressganged in the first place!
In a way, maybe the Forlorn Hopes were based on the same principle as prize money - that Wellington offered anyone who volunteered to lead a pretty risky attack on a city the first pick of the booty etc. I think the Forlorn Hopes knew they would either get killed or rich!
Re the phaetons and tilburys, and on top of being 'on view', one also had some pretty frisky horses to control - definitely a bar on hanky-panky!
Margaret wrote: "More recently but still pre-Reagan, one of the reasons the presidential pension was established was how little Harry Truman had to live on after leaving office. He was able to retire to the family home in Ohio, so he had somewhere to live, but..."
*ahem* Kansas City, Missouri. We're rather proud of him around here.
The senate actually voted to give President's a pension in the 1950's because of Truman. He was BROKE after being president. He and Bess packed up their car and drove back to Missouri after leaving the White House.
The story rather famously goes that the only two living presidents at the time the pension was instated were Truman and Hoover, who was wealthy. Hoover agreed to take the pension also because he didn't want to embarrass Truman for being the only one to take it. It makes me think more of Hoover for doing that.
Amy! Long time no see! 😊
Georgette Heyer Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
The Secret Garden (other topics)The Black Moth (other topics)
Powder and Patch (other topics)
Arabella (other topics)
The Nonesuch (other topics)
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It doesn't necessarily hold true in the GH world, though, does i..."
What I mean by ruling class is those who actually rule, the politicians of the world, peers and commoners and royalty (or whatever our countries call them) alike.
I agree with you, though, that in order to stay in the "upper class", money is helpful, to say the least!