Even Mr. Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen’s own nephew, does not seem to have realised Dr. Cooper’s plurality of livings, for he says, “The family lived in close intimacy with two cousins, Edward and Jane Cooper, the children of Mrs. Austen’s eldest sister, and Dr. Cooper, the vicar of Sonning, near Reading. The Coopers lived for some years at Bath, which seems to have been much frequented in those days by clergymen retiring from work. I believe that Cassandra and Jane sometimes visited them there, and that Jane thus acquired the intimate knowledge of the topography and customs of Bath which enabled her to write Northanger Abbey long before she resided there herself.”
The inference is not quite true, for if this had been so she must have acquired that knowledge before her seventeenth year, for she was that age when her uncle Dr. Cooper died, and it is probable that her aunt had predeceased him as she is never mentioned at all by Mrs. Lybbe Powys, who relates a tour she made with him, his son and daughter, to the Isle of Wight. But there is no need for any inference of the sort at all, for Jane had another uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Leigh-Perrot—her mother’s brother having adopted the additional name of Perrot—who sometimes resided at Bath, and it is obviously to an invitation from this aunt she refers in a letter of 1799.
As we have said, it was the season of balls at Steventon; quiet as the rectory was there were many large houses of the country gentry around in various directions, and entertainments of all sorts were then perhaps even more in fashion than now; to all of these the rectory party received invitations. In the second paragraph of the first letter, Jane says, “We had an exceeding good ball last night,” and later, “I am almost ashamed to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together ... we had a very good supper, and the greenhouse was illuminated in a very elegant manner.”
In another letter, written later, she gives the following account of a ball: “We were very well entertained, and could have stayed longer, but for the arrival of my list shoes to convey me home, and I did not like to keep them waiting in the cold. The room was tolerable full, and the ball opened by Miss Glyn. The Miss Lances had partners, Captain Dauvergne’s friend appeared in regimentals, Caroline Maitland had an officer to flirt with, and Mr. John Harrison was deputed by Captain Smith, himself being absent, to ask me to dance. Everything went well, you see, especially after we had tucked Mrs. Lance’s neckerchief in behind, and fastened it with a pin.”
Mr. Austen-Leigh says: “There must have been more dancing throughout the country in those days than there is now, and it seems to have sprung up more spontaneously, as if it were a natural production, with less fastidiousness as to the quality of music, lights, and floor. Many country towns had a monthly ball throughout the winter, in some of which the same apartment served for dancing and tea-room.”
People in the country were then more dependent on each other for entertainment, there was no looking upon the London season as a necessity, and people could not rush about from one end of England to another for a night or two as they now do. During the long winter months, when the bitter cold and the cumbersome methods of travelling made any journey out of the question for most, to say nothing of the expense, balls for those in the neighbourhood of Steventon were frequently given, and Jane and Cassandra Austen had their full share, and seem to have most heartily enjoyed it. Jane herself evidently loved dancing, balls are frequently mentioned in her novels, and the actual dancing itself, even without its enjoyable concomitant of flirtation, seems to have attracted her.
Customs, however, then differed very much from those that now reign in ballrooms. In one way everything was more formal, in another more simple. The music, the wines, and the floor were less considered; young people got up an impromptu dance in a drawing-room very easily; and the champagne, without which no one would dare to ask their friends to a dance now, was then not considered necessary. On the other hand, the actual performance was more formal; there were no romps at lancers, no round dances such as waltzes at all; waltzes did not begin to be danced generally until 1814, and the polka not until 1844. In the beginning of 1814, when the waltz was just coming into fashion, Miss Mitford declaims against it, and calls it this “detestable dance.” “In addition to the obvious reasons which all women ought to have for disliking it, I cannot perceive its much vaunted graces. What beauty can there be in a series of dizzying evolutions, of which the wearisome monotony banishes all the tricksy fancies of the poetry of motion, and conveys to the eyes of the spectators the idea of a parcel of teetotums set a-spinning for their amusement?” In Jane’s time, minuets, cotillions, etc., were the staple of the programme, and toward the end of the evening country dances, no doubt danced with much precision and elegance. Deportment was then a necessary part of the curriculum at every girls’ boarding-school; and the ways of getting in and out of a carriage, and much more of bowing and entering a reception room, were all taught as if the performer were to go upon the stage; every motion was regulated. It is true that the custom, so aptly illustrated in Evelina, when the lady was forced by politeness to accept the first man who asked her, and to remain his partner for the evening, a custom that must have been responsible for many sore hearts and spoiled evenings, had gone out in Jane’s time. But it was the fashion, at what were called private dances, for any man to ask any girl he fancied to become his partner without previous introduction; at public balls the Master of the Ceremonies did the introducing. In Evelina’s time, girls must have had many an exciting evening, many an anguished moment when the wrong man asked the honour of their hand while the right man had not come forward! Evelina made a terrible mess of things at her first dance. She refused the ridiculous little fop who first approached her, and afterwards accepted the handsome and engaging Lord Orville, who, it must be confessed, is a far superior man to Miss Austen’s corresponding hero, Darcy. Evelina narrates her acceptance of him in a letter to her guardian—
“Well, I bowed, and I am sure I coloured; for indeed I was frightened at the thoughts of dancing before so many people, all strangers, and, which was worse, with a stranger; however, that was unavoidable; for, though I looked round the room several times, I could not see one person that I knew. And so he took my hand and led me to join in the dance.”
Of course the fop was not one to take this considered insult quietly, he approached when Evelina and Lord Orville were sitting out between the dances, and asked, “‘May I know to what accident I must attribute not having the honour of your hand?’
“‘Accident, sir,’ repeated I much astonished.