All language subtitles for A Very British Romance with Lucy Worsley S01E01

In our modern world, there's an idea
that fills our dreams and desires.

Something we've all searched for.

Romantic love.

Ooh!

# Love is the sweetest thing

# What else on earth
could ever bring... #

What's fascinating is that

so much of romance
isn't about spontaneous feeling.

All of love's rituals
had to be invented.

# Love is the sweetest thing. #

Even the way that we feel
can be traced back to specific

historical moments.

In this series, I'm going to tell the
story of three centuries of romance.

Romance changed us from a society
where courtship was controlled

to one where the romantic
possibilities seemed endless.

It crossed barriers of class
and sexuality

and transformed the way women
and men relate to one another.

And none of this would
have happened without

the invention of the romantic novel.

This was literature that

was as revolutionary as
a political manifesto.

By focusing on love,

it drove readers to seek new forms
of romance in their own lives.

No other artform has

so utterly transformed the way
the British think and feel.

SHE SIGHS

In this first programme, I'm taking
you back to the Georgian age,

when romance as we would
recognise it first appeared.

People started reading
romantic novels.

Fashionable love letters were
full of tears and purple prose.

And with moonlit flits
to Gretna Green,

romantic adventure started to enter
the lives of ordinary people.

There were new ways of feeling and
flirting and expressing your love.

Welcome to the first blossoming
of British romance.

# I only hope that fate may bring

# Love's story to you. #

I confess.

I do love a good costume drama,
but for me, the business of getting

together in real life in Georgian
times is surprisingly unromantic.

Let's start with a true story.
Just think to yourself -

what are the ingredients
of a great 18th-century romance?

Well, probably a big house like this,
a spirited heroine, like this,

and perhaps a handsome hero.

Unfortunately, for Mary Granville,
an exceptionally beautiful Georgian

teenager, she wasn't to get the happy
ever after that she'd hoped for.

In Mary's own account of her life,
she remembers how naive she was

when she went in 1717 to stay
at the house of her rich uncle,

little realising
that she'd been invited

as potential wife material
for his rich friends.

The house was busy, it was full
of guests. Mary was out in society.

She was as happy
as she could have imagined.

But then, an old friend of her
uncle's arrived, Mr Pendarves.

According to Mary, Mr Pendarves was

"a person who was more
disgusting than engaging".

Over three times her age,
his face was crimson

and he was excessively fat.

His clothes were shabby
and he was ridden with gout.

The days turned in to weeks
and Mary came to the horrific

realisation that Mr Pendarves
was staying for her.

She did her best to put him off.
She was rude to him.

When he walked in to the room,
she'd walk out again.

She even slammed the door on him.

But Mr Pendarves
would not be deterred.

HE BURPS LOUDLY

Too late, Mary went to see her uncle,

who told her to stop
being so childish

and commanded her to marry
her geriatric Romeo.

Now,
if this had been a Jane Austen novel,

things would have worked out
for poor Mary.

A handsome young man with good
prospects would have come along

and rescued her.

But Mr Pendarves' land and influence
were valuable to Mary's uncle,

so the marriage went ahead.

Married life for Mrs Pendarves
would be mercifully short.

Her husband's heavy drinking
saw to that.

One morning, she woke up
in their bed, had a look at him,

he was black in the face.

He had died in the night.

As Mary herself put it,
being a widow was not unwelcome.

The predicament of Mary Pendarves,
coerced into marrying for the

benefit of her family, was a common
one at the start of the 18th century.

And not just among the aristocracy.

Out on the street,
the newly-emerging commercial

and trading classes had started
to reshape society.

Here, life was precarious,
with bankruptcy

and debtors prison a constant threat.

Marriage offered a strategic way
for families

and the community to pool resources
and safeguard the future.

In the 18th century,
your choice of who to marry wasn't

just your own business,
nor even just your family's.

It was a matter
for the whole community.

People's jobs and their businesses

and their status
could all be affected.

And this meant that everybody wanted
a say in your choice of spouse.

Recent historical research emphasises
the high level of interference

that couples could expect
from those around them.

A talented apprentice
might be encouraged to

court his master's daughter.
He got a step up,

while the long-term prospects
of the business were protected.

Where a couple couldn't provide
for future children, the community

might step in and collude with
the vicar to stop the wedding.

Even if you thought that your choice
was your own, it very often wasn't.

The families and the friends of young
courting couples would help them out.

They'd deliver messages
and arrange social occasions

and get-togethers for
the young people to meet.

They'd be ever so helpful,
but really,

they were keeping an eye on what
was happening and, in some cases,

they were trying to bend
the young lovers to their will.

We can see just how blatant
this manipulation could be

when we look at a forgotten
form of literature -

letter writing manuals,
like this one from the 1740s.

Ostensibly, the book teaches you
how to write a good letter,

but it does two other things as well.

Firstly, it provides entertainment,
it's enjoyable,

and, secondly, it ends up being
a guide to good behaviour.

It suggests the correct way to
go about something like courtship

and more than half of the letters
are devoted to that topic.

Reading all of these readymade
letters, I'm surprised at how

acceptable it was to poke your nose
into somebody else's love life.

So, here's a model letter to
a gentleman of fortune who has

children, dissuading him
from a second marriage with a lady

much younger than himself.

If you know someone
in that situation,

this is the letter
that you should write.

Then we have a letter from
a father to his daughter,

recommending that she should accept
an offer of marriage from a man

who is a bit older than her.

She writes back saying -
I don't want to, do I have to?

But then we get his reply,

"urgently enforcing her compliance
with his desire."

Poor girl.

And then there's my favourite
letter of all, which is

from a father again to his daughter
against a frothy French lover.

"His frothy behaviour,"

this letter goes, "may divert well
enough as an acquaintance,

"but is very unanswerable, I think,
to the character of a husband."

In other words, don't marry him,
he's just too French.

All of these letters
and the characters in them

were created by a single writer,

who in this case was also
the printer of the book

and one of these letters,
number 138, from a father to

a daughter in service,
would change literature for ever.

Here is the germ of an idea
that would become Pamela,

the first classic romantic novel.

The writer of both the letters
and Pamela was Samuel Richardson.

I find it almost impossible
to exaggerate

the importance of this tubby
middle-aged man.

Samuel Richardson was the
fairy godfather of British romance.

The son of a wood worker, by 1740s,

Richardson was one of the most
successful printers in London.

He was well aware that there was a
market for what were termed Romances.

Imported from France, this fledgling
genre of fiction knew its audience.

Targeted at the 40% of women
who could now read,

the stories were rambling,
but punctuated with racy incidents,

involving aristocratic heroines
in far off lands.

Pamela, though,
was to be a new species of writing.

It followed a single event,
a courtship,

and was gripping, realistic,
and believable.

Samuel Richardson set his Romance in
the grubby world of the present day.

His readers felt that the characters
in Pamela were perhaps people

they'd seen on the street,
or even people that they knew.

And if you look at the title page
of the novel, you'll notice that

there's no mention even
of Samuel Richardson as the author.

He was that keen to maintain
the illusion that this really was,

as it says, a collection of "letters
from a beautiful young damsel

"to her parents".

The letters of Pamela Andrews take us

into the world of the invisible
serving class.

Pamela is vulnerable, she's living
away from her family, and she's

flattered but wary of the attentions
of Mr B - her rich, young employer.

"Don't be frightened," she reassures
her parents, "I am honest,

"but if my head and my heart will
let me, you shall hear all."

I think it's completely
extraordinary that a corpulent

man of business in his 50s
was able to get

convincingly inside the mind
of a 15-year-old girl.

It helped that Richardson clearly
liked and understood women

and he wasn't afraid
to ask their opinion.

Samuel Richardson used what
we'd call a focus group to check

that his story really was riveting.

It consisted of his wife and a young
lady who was staying with them

and, every night, their heads
would appear around the door

of his study and they'd say, "Mr R,
we've come for a little more Pamela.

"How is Pamela getting on?"

Pamela was the first modern romance
novel and the first best seller.

Many people also think
it marks the moment

when the novel itself was born.

It was also a multimedia event.

I've met up with Lynn Shepherd,
novelist and Samuel Richardson

obsessive, to look at images created
by the artist Joseph Highmore.

So, Lynn, this is very clever.

It's the whole story of Pamela,
half a million words,

condensed into 12 pictures.

Absolutely. It's the graphic
novel of Pamela. Ha-ha!

Visitors would come
to Highmore's studio,

peruse their favourite scenes,
and order a set of prints.

To follow the story of Pamela,
being left at the mercy of Mr B,

who loses no time in attempting
to take advantage of her.

Pamela retains a soft spot for Mr B,

although today, his behaviour would
result in an exclusion order.

What's happening in this incredibly
salacious scene down here?

Yes, this is what Richardson
referred to as a warm scene.

A warm scene. A sexy scene.
Basically, yes.

As you say, extremely dramatic.

Mr B attempting to have his way
with Pamela and she's fainting

and this is what happens again and
again in the novel... She faints.

She faints. Every time he gets
anywhere near her, she faints,

and he is sort of put off by this
and withdraws.

What do you think people's
boyfriends felt about Pamela?

Because presumably their girlfriends,
as soon as they came up to them,

they would go,
"Oh, I've fainted away!"

Well, it would
be interesting to know

whether she started
a fad for fainting.

A fad for fainting.

And then we go to this one,
which is again very interesting,

which is Pamela in the carriage.
What's happened here?

He's taking her away.

Well, she thinks she's going
back to her parents,

but actually what's happened is that
he's put her in his carriage...

He's kidnapped her! Basically, yes.

He's having her carted off to his
estate in Lincolnshire and what's

interesting about this is
it's another thing

about the 18th-century novel,
which comes out very strongly here,

which is that men have
physical freedom, men can travel,

men can decide where they want
to go and when they want to go.

Women are moved about,
literally as if they were objects.

And she is here literally
being moved, against her will,

as she finds out,

because she's not actually going
where she thinks she's going.

And we have Mr B here
watching from the window.

There's a lot of subterfuge

and spying going on in some of these
pictures and that's a great example.

At one point, she actually says,
"I can't even leave the house

"in these fine clothes because people
will think that I've stolen them."

Yes. "They'll come after me."
Or that she's his mistress.

Or that she's a trollop. Yes, quite.
So, the poor woman is trapped really.

Yes. Absolutely.
But it all ends up happily...

Here they are at the altar.
It does, yes.

And the interesting thing about
that is that one of the reasons

he falls in love with her
and decides to marry her...

As opposed to just raping her.
Absolutely.

..is by reading her letters.

So the letters are not just the form
of the novel, they are really

important, in terms of what's
actually going on in the book.

He reads her letters

and is converted by
her letters into virtue.

So, exactly what Richardson wants
to happen with his reader as well.

By reading her letters,
we are converted to virtue.

It makes us a better person...
Absolutely.

..to read Pamela's letters. Mm-hm.

The tale of the servant girl who won
the lord was popular with all

levels in society.

And news of this remarkable novel
travelled along the turnpikes

and highways of Britain.

The story of Pamela was so massively
popular that, pretty soon,

merchandising appeared. You could
waft yourself with a Pamela fan.

Or drink your tea from a Pamela cup.

And the story was enjoyed
at all levels of society.

In one hamlet, the villagers were
reading extracts of the novel,

as it was published
in the newspapers.

When they got to the chapter with
Pamela's wedding, they went wild.

They got the keys to the church,

they flew a flag from the steeple,
and they set the bells ringing.

I imagine people going past
and saying, "What's happening?"

And the villagers all yelling,
"Pamela's getting married!"

CHURCH BELL RINGS

Our girl is married at last!

Mr B has done the right thing.
Yes, Pamela!

After Pamela, the idea of a marriage
across a class divide could

appear in any young lady's fantasy.

There's a rather telling incident
in the early life of Jane Austen,

who vandalised the marriage register
here in her father's church.

In the front of the book, she defaced
blank forms for marriage banns

with the names of imaginary
future husbands.

It's a fascinating insight into the
daydreams of a Georgian teenage girl.

First of all, she imagines herself,
Jane Austen, getting married

to the very grand sounding Henry
Frederick Fitzwilliam of London.

That's almost Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Then she has a go imagining herself

the wife of Edmond Arthur William
Mortimer of Liverpool.

He sounds a bit less posh,
doesn't he?

And finally, she envisages
her future as plain Jane Smith,

the wife of Jack Smith.

Fantasies about vastly unequal
marriages should come as no surprise.

One of young Austen's favourite
writers was Samuel Richardson.

Marriage was the perfect subject
for early novelists.

Getting your choice wrong
was unthinkable.

Not only was there no going back,
under English law,

when a woman married,
she ceased to exist.

If you got married
as an 18th-century woman,

you would lose everything -
your land, your possessions,

even your children, all become
the property of your husband.

Even if your husband was nice,
then, after his death,

the property would go to his heirs.

That's just the way it was, legally.

But a good Georgian husband, with
access to good lawyers, might take

the trouble to arrange some form of
financial independence for his wife.

A quarterly allowance,
known as pin money perhaps,

and something for her
to live on should he die.

In the story of Pamela, the whole
of the last quarter of the novel

is devoted to working
this all out legally.

It's only when we know that Pamela
has financial independence and

security that we really believe that
she will live happily ever after.

With Pamela's move from subordinate
to equal via a marriage

based on mutual respect,
Richardson gave his readers

a model for domestic happiness
that for us feels rather modern.

In his own life, he had borne
his share of personal tragedy,

including the death of his first wife
and their six children.

He believed that his health had
been worn down by grief.

This threw him into
the arms of a physician

with some rather bonkers ideas,

including indoor equestrianism.

Samuel Richardson's physician was
Dr Cheyne, a famous nerve doctor,

who thought that Richardson
made his health worse

by his habit of worrying.

Cheyne also thought that Richardson
should get more exercise,

using one of these - a chamber horse.

Giddy-up!

You get all the benefits
of being on horseback,

without having to
leave your own room,

and Cheyne said that, if Richardson
was worried about losing

the writing time, well,
then he could dictate to somebody.

Whoa!

This may all sound
a bit like quackery,

but Dr Cheyne was a hugely important
figure in 18th-century medicine.

In his book, The English Malady,

he set out his ideas about the
diseases of the nervous system.

It would make having
weak nerves fashionable.

Dr Cheyne himself suffered
from nervous distempers, which is

perhaps why he gives the impression
that all the best people do.

It seems that members of high society
were particularly susceptible.

Their sedentary lifestyle gave them
extra sensitive nerves,

a condition called sensibility.

Over the next few decades,

this idea of sensibility
would redefine Romance.

The upside was that
you were more alive,

you experienced things
more intensely.

The downside was that
it opened you up to other maladies,

such as long grief
or dark melancholy,

or even hopeless love,

that would wear out
your nervous system.

When Richardson published
his 1748 novel Clarissa,

he transmitted Cheyne's ideas
to his vast number of readers.

The heroine, Clarissa Harlow,
is sensibility made flesh.

Her ability to feel things deeply
is a sign of her goodness.

SHE SIGHS

When her ambitious family try
to marry Clarissa off to

a man that she doesn't love,

she escapes with the help
of a charming rake, Robert Lovelace.

But Lovelace is danger, male
sexuality at its most destructive.

He installs Clarissa in lodgings
which turn out, really,

to be a brothel.

It's just the start of an obsession
which dooms them both.

And it's a slowly unfolding tragedy
from which there's no escape.

This novel is like a tool
or a machine for drawing out

emotion from the readers.

Richardson was arousing
their dormant sensibility

and, for some of them, it was a very
intense and distressing experience.

One lady wrote him a letter, saying,
"I've cried a pint of tears.

"In agonies, I would
lay down the book, take it up again,

"walk around the room,
wipe my eyes, read again,

"and then I would have
to throw away the book, crying out.

"Excuse me,
Good Mr Richardson, I cannot go on!"

But Richardson's readers persevered,
identifying

so closely with a fictional character
with a new experience,

and for a million words, they endured
Clarissa's extreme traumas

and lingering death alongside her.

The emotional impact of the book
rippled out through

society for decades.

And by inventing Clarissa,
a heroine of sensibility,

Richardson helped to change
the way the British felt.

In Britain, the second half
of the 18th century was

dominated by what's been called
the Cult of Sensibility.

And its early acolytes could be
found in fashionable Bath,

where couples wanted to show
themselves in a more emotional way.

The painter Thomas Gainsborough
set up shop here in 1759.

He'd come from rural Suffolk,
where he created a celebrated

depiction of a traditional marriage,
Mr and Mrs Andrews.

Not much sign of affection
between these two.

But now, Gainsborough would have
to adapt to the new vogue.

Once he was in Bath, Gainsborough
painted Mr and Mrs Byam.

Now, he had made a stack of money
out of owning slaves.

Not the sort of person
you'd necessarily expect to

go for this touchy-feely self
presentation.

But it was beginning to be
the Age of Sensibility.

He wanted to be shown
as a man of feeling.

He and his wife are going
for a country walk.

They're saying - we are part
of nature and they're a partnership.

They're exactly the same height,
they're walking along, arm in arm.

The message is - we're in love.

Feelings were being flaunted.

Romantic relationships were
something to show off about.

Now, obviously,

there had been loving
relationships before this,

but in the 18th century,
thanks to sensibility,

Romance became fashionable,
it became glamorised.

The perfect showcase
for your romantic feelings was

the love letter, which became
more and more emotional,

as this fashion
for sensibility took hold.

I'm at the Library of Birmingham
to meet historian Sally Holloway.

We're going to look at a typical
set of love letters

written by the future social
reformer Joseph Strutt.

This son of a wheelwright
made good clearly had

something of a soppy side.

These letters are kind of written
at the apex of sensibility

in 1770s and '80s. And he's writing

a love poem. A poem. Very fancy.
To his sweetheart to impress her.

So this is his big moment
as the suitor. So, he says to her...

She's got Isabella Douglas...
He said - Douglas is the theme.

"Oh, the powers divine inspire her
soul with sentiments like mine."

It's very flowery and...
Gushing, more like! Gushing, yeah.

It's dramatic. Thoughts that can
never change when she appears.

I wish the hours were days
and the days were years.

So he's saying, swoon, ladies.
Joseph is here.

And also, he's using these kind of
set kind of stock romantic tropes

that he would invoke to show
he's the ideal lover.

So, saying - when we're apart,
time drags, you know,

an hour feels like a day, but
when we're together, time flies by.

Right.

So, he's kind of drawing upon these
accepted romantic customs to

show himself kind of
as the ideal lover.

And how did the relationship
progress?

Yes, so, it's not uncommon for
couples to have kind of an emotional

crisis, so at one point,

he accused her of hanging out
with kind of base flattering men.

So, he's giving her a telling off.

What's he going to feel
when her next letter arrives?

Well, so, he tells us here.

He says, "When Mr Fox showed me
your letter on Friday, my dear,

"Isabella, a chilling coldness
seized my whole frame.

"My hands trembled as I received it.

"I felt as I think I should feel if
I had committed an atrocious crime."

An atrocious crime.

So, Joseph is trying to portray
himself as a man of sensibility

and so all of his emotions
are portrayed in bodily form.

So, it's blushing, weeping,
trembling,

he's kind of got chills, and these
are all physical manifestations

of feeling to show
his kind of innate

sensitivity to the world around him,
so, by the 1780s, it wasn't

enough to just say you were
sensitive, emotional...

You had to show it.
You had to show it.

It had to be shown through the body.

These love letters survived

because they were treasured
as objects in themselves.

They were love tokens that could be
touched or held to trigger emotions

and to feel close to your lover.

Love tokens could take
all sorts of forms.

They could be cheaply produced,
or they could be luxury artefacts.

In the late 18th century, there was
a craze for eye miniatures.

These tiny little portraits
are tantalising,

because they're anonymous.

You can't tell who it is, unless
you've spent an awfully long time

looking into their eyes
and can recognise them.

So, people used them
to tease their friends.

You might wear one of these and say,
"You'll never guess who my lover is."

Sadly, that means that we will never
know which Georgian lovers

these eyes belonged to.

During the Georgian period,

it became progressively
easier to meet people,

as places to flirt,
like concert halls, pleasure gardens

and, above all,
assembly rooms were being built.

And the wealthy could now
fish in a bigger pond,

a national marriage market.

During the summer season,
they would congregate in Bath.

Here, the gouty took the water,
while their young companions

ventured to the Upper Assembly Rooms,
in search of romance.

Ladies arrived at the Assembly Rooms
by sedan chair.

They were better in Bath than
carriages because of all the hills.

In fact, that Colonnade out there was
like a taxi rank for the chairs

and the chairmen.

Next, the guests checked their
cloaks, they could go on into the

card room for gambling, but the main
event was the ballroom through here.

Now, the rooms today seem all calm
and elegant,

when in fact they would have been
packed with people.

Jane Austen used to come here and she
has one of her young heroines rather

disappointed by the experience
of a ball at the Assembly Rooms

because of all the crush
and the crowd.

It was only by a continual exertion
of strength and ingenuity that the

young lady was able to get to a spot
where she could see any dancing.

In addition to the marble fireplaces

and the candles lining the walls,
there were five crystal chandeliers

illuminating the room
with an explosion of light.

Add beating hearts to the scene
and it must have seemed magical.

This fantastic little thing
is my Georgian jealousy glass.

Now, it wasn't uncommon for people
to carry spyglasses or miniature

telescopes to say hello to their
friends across the ballroom. Yoo-hoo!

I'm over here!

But this one has a secret mirror
hidden inside it,

which means that I can see over here.

I can see the tip of my finger

and all this area of the ballroom
behind me.

Which means that, if my boyfriend
was talking to another young

lady behind my back,
I could catch him at it.

Now, obviously,
these weren't totally secret.

Lots of people knew how they worked,

but they provided an extra
frisson of fun to the flirtation.

Some people actively enjoyed being
spied on through a jealousy glass.

But assembly rooms were policed
by a master of ceremonies who would

make introductions
and vet new arrivals,

sometimes even barring the likes of
shopkeepers and other working people.

So patrons were unlikely to run
into anybody of whom their parents

would disapprove.

For all the sense of freedom,

flirting here was quite
strictly controlled.

To play the game of romance,
it helped first to know the rules.

In 1778, a novel appeared, Evelina,
that told the story of a young

girl's journey through the pitfalls
of this emerging marriage market.

Evelina is beautiful.
She's a girl of great sensibility.

But she's an outsider.

She survives a series
of social embarrassments...

..and preposterous escapades,
finally to win the hand

of the handsome Lord Orville.

Crucially, the book takes us into
the private lives of young women

and it details the industry
that went into becoming

an eligible catch.

When Evelina is about
to go to a ball,

we follow her around
the London shops, as she chooses

ribbons and accessories.

And then, there's the hair!

Ooh!

Another feather? Yes.
Let's have another feather.

1778,
the year that Evelina was published,

coincided with Georgian peak hair.

Ladies went for these immensely-tall
hairstyles - three or four feet -

and decorated with crazy things,

like ships or burrs

or jewels, like mine.

Evelina herself
goes to the hairdressers

to get one of the new do's.

"How oddly my head feels," she says.
"Full of powder and black pins

"and a great cushion on top.
I cannot tell when I will be able

"to make use of a comb again,
my hair is so entangled.

" 'Frizzled', they call it."

The novel had been
published anonymously...

..which made Evelina
even more intriguing.

Evelina gave the philosopher
Edmund Burke a sleepless night,

while the painter Joshua Reynolds
missed meals to be with her.

Everyone wanted to know who
Evelina's creator was.

Few guessed that it was

this shy 24-year-old, Fanny Burney.

Richardson's heroines, a generation
earlier, had been trapped

in domestic spaces...

..but Burney shared,
with Evelina, her own experience

of a society that was loosening up.

'I'm hitting the town with
Claire Harman - Fanny's biographer -

'for a night out in the London
that Burney so memorably described.'

Here we go. I have brought you
a bottle of mineral water.

Yes! Soho-style. Soho-style, yes.

Here we go. Yay! Are we ready to pop?

Yes. Whoo! Oh, slope it up,

slope it up!

So, here we are on our big night
out in the year 1778.

In the novel Evelina, would you
say we get a girl's-eye view

of Georgian London?

We certainly do. It's completely
a fresh, lovely, girlie view

of the city. Nobody had written

a novel of that period that had
so much of a finger on the pulse

of the time. And what Burney was
able to do in her novel was show

all the different strata of society.
She showed the aristocrats,

she showed the middle classes,
which she was very much a member

of herself, and she also showed
the lower classes,

so it is a, kind of, melding
of the classes, which is, of course,

what Jane Austen did later, too,
with Pride and Prejudice.

But Fanny Burney did it first.

There is a Mr Darcy in this story,
isn't there? Lord Orville.

Yes, Lord Orville. Very much.

He is the, kind of,
godfather of Mr Darcy.

He is posh and he is rich
and he is gracious.

He has got sensibility, though, too.
He is a new young man.

But initially, there is
a misunderstanding, isn't there?

Initially, they don't hit it off.

Yes. They don't hit it off,
although he is the very first person

she ever dances with out of school.
She says she has only danced with

schoolgirls before. The very first
bloke she ever dances with is...

BOTH: ..Lord Orville!
So, that is, kind of, ker-ching.

But because she is so tongue-tied,
she is so incapable

of knowing how to behave...
Yes. ..in society, she doesn't know

what to do or what to say
to Lord Orville.

So, she says nothing
and she feels like an idiot.

Burney's genius
is being able to express

how a girl would feel, like that.

And it really gives the novel
a, sort of, freshness.

Evelina, surely, IS Bridget Jones?
She is Bridget Jones.

I think if you did a DNA test
of Bridget Jones and Evelina,

you would find that they were
related, because Bridget Jones was,

as Helen Fielding said,
based on Pride and Prejudice.

And Pride and Prejudice, lo
and behold, was based on Evelina -

or, at least, it owes a huge debt
to Evelina. So, you have got

a young girl enjoying London,
getting herself into all sorts of

embarrassing situations? Yes.
I mean, the unattainable man,

the one you feel, every time
you are in this company...

You make a fool of yourself. Exactly.
You do something absolutely stupid.

How could it ever work out all
right? But, hey, he has just got

that ability to see through
your blundering and your stupidity.

And it has a happy ending,
for Lord Orville and everything.

Of course. It's wedding bells.

You can, sort of, hear them
distantly, right at the beginning

of the novel, but, yes, of course,
they get married.

They have many, many a slip betwixt
cup and lip, as it were.

Cheers to them. Cheers.

THEY GIGGLE

Toward the end of the 18th century,

the number of women writers exploded

and Evelina's success had placed
Fanny Burney in the vanguard.

But nearly all of her profits
were going to her publishers,

so she took matters
into her own hands.

This is Fanny Burney's third novel,
Camilla, and, by this time,

she decided that she wanted to earn
a bit of money from her writing.

So, rather daringly,
she published it by subscription.

And if you look at the list of people

who have contributed financially,

it is lovely, because it is like
Fanny's being supported here

by a sisterhood of female
Georgian novelists.

We have got here Mrs Ann Radcliffe

and Maria Edgeworth and,
perhaps nicest of all, a young lady

who was only 20 at the time,
"Miss J Austen", of Steventon.

The romance novel made people
think about the importance

of romantic love and, by shaping
stories around courtship,

its writers were changing what
people expected in their own lives.

Some anecdotes from the time suggest
a growing understanding

of matters of the heart
by the public at large.

There's the curious case

of a certain Richard Bignall,
a bright boy of humble origin,

who was working for
a well-to-do Oxfordshire lawyer.

He fell in love

with the boss's daughter.

And when Bignall himself
qualified as a lawyer, in 1770,

he asked her to marry him.

But her father said, "No way!"

The young couple got married in
secret and, when this was revealed,

her father chucked her
out of his house.

Now, you might think, that is
perfectly reasonable behaviour

for any responsible
Georgian paterfamilias,

but in this case,
something rather curious happened.

All the people thereabouts took
the part of the young lovers

and, gradually, they withdrew
their legal business from the father

and they gave it, instead,
to the newly-qualified,

newly-married Mr Bignall.

I think that probably
all the people in that part

of Oxfordshire must have
been reading romantic novels.

They may also have been
reading the newspapers,

which were filled with eloping
couples defying parental authority.

One of the most famous was the
elopement of the under-age heiress,

Sarah Anne Child and her lover,
the 10th Earl of Westmoreland,

in 1782.

After drugging her chaperone, Sarah
Anne escaped from her parents' house

and headed north with the Earl,
in his carriage.

The couple travelled
300 miles from London,

with her father
and all of his servants

chasing along behind.

At one point, one of the servants

very nearly caught up
with the carriage,

so the Earl stuck his gun
out of the window.

But then, he hesitated.
It was Sarah Anne who said,

"Shoot him, my Lord! Shoot him!"

GUNSHOT

The Earl fired,
but with a great piece of good luck,

the bullet went through the horse
and left the rider unharmed.

They were aiming for Scotland
and were successfully married

just over the Border, in a tiny
village called Gretna Green.

Because she was under 21, it would
have been virtually impossible

for Sarah to marry in England
without her parents' consent,

but Scotland
had different marriage laws....

..and many couples from the north
of England would cross the River Esk

to get to Gretna Green and reap
the benefits of a Scottish marriage.

Here, you could get married
by declaration.

It simply meant exchanging vows
in front of witnesses.

So, marriage in Scotland
was quick, it was cheap

and it was secret! By the time your
disapproving relatives worked out

what was going on,

it was too late!

This cross-Border traffic
was busiest at the time

of the annual hiring fairs,

when agricultural workers,
with a few days between jobs,

would flock into Gretna Green
and other Border towns,

in order to get married.

Here, they could engage
the services of a self-styled priest.

Now, these weren't proper priests.

They were just cobblers or fishermen,
or sometimes smugglers,

who wanted to make
a bit of extra money.

For a fee, they would offer you
a one-stop service for all your

wedding needs.
They would preside over the ceremony

and sort out your accommodation.
"Maybe a barn for your party, sir?"

Or a bed chamber
for your wedding night.

Since the 1770s,

a Scottish marriage
had been accessible to everyone,

thanks to the expanding network
of turnpike roads.

Even London was now only
three days away.

And just next to the road, the first
place eloping couples arrived at

would have been
the Blacksmith's Forge.

As stories about
Gretna Green circulated,

the idea that it was the blacksmith
who performed the wedding ceremony

took hold...
and in plays, prints and novels,

the blacksmith forged lovers together
just as easily

as he did two pieces of metal.

It was a story that had it all.

There was romance -
the triumph of love,

the defiance of parental authority.

Then, there was adventure -
the dash through the night.

But then, in this crazy modern world
of high-speed travel

and coaching inns and turnpike roads,

there was the comforting traditional
figure of the friendly blacksmith.

What could possibly go wrong,
if there was a blacksmith involved?

The public were well aware
of Gretna's Green's dark side.

There were well-publicised
abductions, along with many

unhappy marriages,
once desires had cooled.

Writers like Fanny Burney
used "the Gretna plot" as a warning.

A question was being asked
over and over again -

could all this romance
actually be harmful?

In 1799, a letter appeared
in a magazine, purporting to be

from the mother
of a teenage daughter.

This mother was complaining
that the daughter did

nothing in the world but read novels,
from morning to night.

Two or three times a day,

the daughter would send the maid
to the library to get new books

and during the course of the week,
she'd read novels with titles

like Excessive Sensibility,

Refined Delicacy

and Sentimental Beauty.

The mother's point was that
sensibility may originally

have been a genuine,
heartfelt outpouring of emotion,

but it had become nothing
but an artificial self-indulgence.

"We've had enough sensibility,"
she was saying, "let's get over it."

At the end of the 18th century,
sensibility was coming to be seen

as a distraction from the real
dilemmas that women faced.

The philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft
claimed that an overstretched

sensibility prevented women from
being rational and useful.

But a more nuanced critique
occurred in the debut novel

of a spinster from Hampshire -

Jane Austen.

Two centuries ago, you could have
encountered Jane here -

Chawton House Library is
in a home originally owned

by her brother Edward.

This little book is an early
edition of Jane Austen's first

published novel from 1811,
Sense And Sensibility.

It's a tiny little thing, isn't it?

It's gentile, it's petite,

and there's no indication
of the dynamite that lies within.

The novel follows the courtship
trials of two sisters.

Elinor is Sense,
the voice of pragmatism,

while Marianne is
a disciple of romantic Sensibility.

We encounter them at a moment
of crisis - their father has died

and they've been left £10,000.

They, their mother and their younger
sister will all have to live on it.

The whole plot hinges on what this
inheritance was going to mean

to the four female Dashwoods.

Jane Austen's readers would have
known at once exactly

what standard of living £10,000
represented.

Invested in government bonds
at 5% a year, it would have meant

an annual income of £500 -

not a particularly lavish lifestyle.

The Dashwoods' nasty sister-in-law
took malicious pleasure

in imagining their reduced
circumstances.

"They will live so cheap,"

she says, "their housekeeping
will be nothing at all.

"They will have no carriage,
no horses and hardly any servants.

"They will keep no company
and have no expenses of any kind.

"Only conceive how comfortable
they will be."

Sense And Sensibility subtly
shows how the sisters' feelings

are shaped
by their precarious situation.

They do find love, but only when
it's balanced with financial sense.

Elinor falls in love with
sensible Edward Ferrars.

At the start of the novel,
he is the heir to a large estate,

but then he gets disinherited.

When he and Elinor declare
their feelings for each other,

they decide that they're not quite
enough in love to get married

on £350 a year -
their combined income.

It's only when Edward's mother
gives him £10,000

that it's all back on and
we hear the ringing of wedding bells.

Elinor's sister Marianne is
a woman of sensibility,

which is why she falls for
the dashing John Willoughby.

He is awfully handsome and
he thinks he's going to be rich too.

He and Marianne enjoy
a torrid romance,

but then Willoughby unexpectedly
loses his prospects.

He dumps her and he runs off instead
with a rich heiress.

Willoughby, you're a heartless cad.

Which leaves Marianne with this
gentleman, Colonel Brandon.

Now, there's a problem here -
he's more than 35 years old,

positively ancient. But he loves
Marianne like a faithful hound.

And his property's not bad either,

although it's a bit boring
for a flighty young thing.

The best entertainment is
watching the carriages go past

on the nearby turnpike road.

But he is a decent chap
with £2,000 a year.

The lesson for Marianne,
as it must have been for many

women like Austen, is that Sense -
wealth and security - come first.

Sensibility and feelings and romance
will hopefully follow on afterwards.

All of this could make Jane Austen
seem mercenary and unromantic.

But, when faced in real life with
a similar choice to Marianne's,

what did she do?

Reader, she didn't.

Details of Austen's own emotional
life are scarce,

but we do know about an intriguing
episode that happened late in 1802.

While staying with his family,

Jane caught the attention of the
amusingly-named Harris Bigg-Wither.

He was a bit awkward, he had greasy
hair and he was six years younger,

but he was the heir to
a large house and estate.

One evening, Harris proposed
to Jane and she accepted him.

There must have been celebrations.

The two families were very friendly

and perhaps Jane's relations
felt a bit of relief.

After all, she was now 27 -
getting on -

and this was a very good match,

the best that she could
have hoped for.

But the next morning,
presumably after a sleepless night,

Jane sent for Harris
and she broke it off.

She'd realised that she just
couldn't love him,

despite the fact it meant
turning down a life like that.

But as Jane herself put it,

"Nothing can be compared to the
misery of being bound without love."

Even though she portrayed a world
in which sense seemed to win out

over sensibility, Austen would not
consider a marriage for herself

that was not based on romantic love.

Jane returned to Bath,
where she'd ended up living.

Jane paid a heavy price for her
choice because now she was embarking

upon middle age still financially
dependent upon her own family.

Austen's own situation is
echoed in her last complete novel,

which is largely set in Bath -
Persuasion.

In Persuasion, we meet somebody
who has lost the game.

The heroine, Anne Elliot,
is a casualty of the marriage market.

She has squandered
her chance of romance

and now she bitterly regrets it.

Years before,
Anne Elliot had been persuaded to

break off the engagement to
a young naval officer.

Now she's almost an old maid.

To make matters worse, the captain
she'd spurned is back on the scene,

now with a lot of money,
and Anne is still in love with him.

Austen gives us aching,
broken-hearted love through

the experience of a woman who thinks
she's lost her chance.

Anne Elliot would often find herself
trapped behind the piano at parties.

She'd have to provide the music
while everybody else danced.

This was the fate of the old maid.

People would give her patronising
little put-downs.

"Oh, well done, Miss Anne.

"Lord bless me, how those little
fingers of yours do fly about."

But Persuasion's greatness isn't just
this comedy of manners.

It goes beyond anything that romantic
fiction had achieved before.

It's not a novel
about the thrill of courtship,

it channels the quiet desperation
of a woman who has known love,

and is deeply in love, but has
to persuade herself that she's not.

As readers, we're taken
right inside these complex emotions.

The book is Austen's most romantic
and, wonderfully,

she does allow Anne to get
her naval officer in the end.

A consolation, perhaps,
for women like Jane herself -

it's never too late
for a second chance.

Austen's own fate was to be
the unmarried spinster.

The burden, shared around by
her married relatives.

Persuasion was written while
Jane Austen was living here,

in a cottage owned by her brother.

This is where she found
the stability to write her novels

and create her universe.

It was at this insignificant-looking
little desk that Jane Austen

created the imaginary world
in which she had all the choice

and control that she lacked
in the real world.

But I think that the desk is
more significant than that,

more than just empowering Jane,

because I believe that Jane Austen
and Fanny Burney

and Samuel Richardson

and the other novelists of this
first great Georgian flowering

of British romance were changing
the world in which they lived.

They'd nurtured a new literary
form - the romantic novel -

that revealed women's uncertain
situations and their interior lives.

They wrote about new ways of feeling
and having fun and, in the case

of Austen, found a way to articulate
sincere romantic love.

By putting this out there,
they encouraged people to seek

these things in their own lives
and they still do.

Ever so many people, even today,
have got their own ideas about love

and romance from the books
written at that desk.

And if you were to ask me who was
the most influential Georgian,

I wouldn't say Nelson or Wellington,
I would say Aunt Jane.

Spinster.

Next time, the Victorians go back
to the future as chivalry brings

romance into the middle-class home.

But can the romantic ideal
survive industrialisation,

changing desires and women's
growing self-confidence?