Dancing Archives - Jane Austen Quickstep Travel Guide

For the Love of Mr Darcy

2 November 2024

My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me.
Mr Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

This is one of the most famous lines side by Mr Darcy in Jane Austen’s most successful novel Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen had a clever way of writing her characters as she demonstrates with Mr Darcy. As a reader, you share Elizabeth’s initial sentiment that he is pompous and unkind, and in total contrast to his friend Charles Bingley. By the end of the novel, you agree with Elizabeth that he is actually compassionate and generous as he helps her sister Lidia avoid a scandal with Wickham.

Jane does give us hints along the way to her own measure of the man. ‘Mr Darcy they had only seen in church‘ demonstrates how religious Mr Darcy is ( a tick in Jane’s box), and if he was at church on this day, he would have been there twice as it was Good Friday.

Jane’s Mr Darcy is very rich

Mr Darcy’s fortune was around £10,000 a year, which makes him a modern day multi-millionaire and then some. No wonder Mrs Bennet cries with joy, ‘I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year and very likely more! ’Tis as good as a Lord!’

To reaffirm this wealth and superiority, Jane cleverly chose the name ‘Fitzwilliam Darcy’ for her hero. Readers would have been familiar with the wealthy Fitzwilliam family whose property was twice the size of Buckingham Palace. They would have also known the ’Darcy’ name in the form of ‘D’Arcy’ meaning ‘of Arcy’ in French.

It was brought over by the Normans when William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. This lineage was very wealthy and had what we would term old money.

Jane Austen’s Own Mr Darcy

People like to think that Jane based Mr Darcy on Tom Lefroy, a man she met at her friends house one Christmas. She fell in love, although her status and lack of fortune meant it would never be a match, and he was sent away to continue his studies, marrying a short time later he moved back to Ireland.

First Impressions

Fourteen years later in 1811, Jane began revising First Impressions which was finally published as Pride and Prejudice on 28 January 1813. Jane wrote of her excitement in a letter to Cassandra, ‘my own darling Child has arrived from London.’ Miss Benn lived a few cottages away in Chawton village, and as she was so poor, the Austen ladies often invited her to tea. They read the novel aloud and Miss Benn never knew that Jane was the author.

The novel sold so well a second edition was printed in the Autumn of the same year, and a third in 1817. The reading public adored Elizabeth Bennet and it was a huge success.

Jane was a great believer in love and marriage, even though she never married herself. To her niece Fanny she wrote, “To you I shall say, as I have often said before, do not be in a hurry, the right man will come at last.”

A modern Mr Darcy

Mr Darcy at Hyde Park in the Serpentine Gallery

Jane spent a lot of time walking in Hyde Park and along the banks of the Serpentine in London when visiting her brother Henry, which is where a 12-foot Mr Darcy was placed.

It was to celebrate the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice featuring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, in the most popular version of Jane’s novel. Written by Andrew Davies (of recent Sanditon fame) it sold 100,000 video box sets whilst on air, and 10 million people watched the final episode. People are amazed to discover that the lake scene where Darcy takes a dip before striding away in his clinging wet shirt and bumping into his future bride is not in the book.

The filming took six months, and Colin fell in love with his co-star Elizabeth, played by Jennifer Ehle.

The fibre glass statue has been moved to Lyme Park in Cheshire where most of the TV series was filmed.

Delicious Mr Darcy

To celebrate 25 years of the BBC’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, a 6ft cake was unveiled to the public at National Trust property Lyme Park in Cheshire, of Colin Firth fame. Michelle Wibowo, worked on the creation of Darcy’s cake counterpart; a process which took over 200 hours.

Nobody was keen on eating him, and he had to laid down and packaged into small, bite-sized pieces!

The other Mr Darcy

In the film edition of Pride and Prejudice, the role of Mr Darcy was played by Matthew Macfayden. He played alongside Keira Knightley as Elizabeth, and the film has been a great success. To celebrate, a bust of Matthew as Mr Darcy is presented in the hallway of Chatsworth House, often used as a film location and some say as inspiration for Pemberley.

A Real Looker

So what did Mr Darcy look like? A special FBI profiler created an image of Mr Darcy from descriptions and research. He produced this image, which some say makes Mr Darcy look too old, however, his hair is probably powdered as was the fashion in the regency period.

What does your Mr Darcy look like?

Jane Austen Dancing at The Vyne

7 June 2024

William, Mary and Thomas Lobb left their family home in Norfolk and moved to The Vyne in Hampshire when their father inherited the estate from a distant Chute grandmother.

In order to comply with the conditions of the inheritance, the family changed their name from Lobb to Chute.

The Inheritance

Set in 1500 acres of gardens and woodland in the parish of Sherborne St John, the Vyne is a beautiful Tudor house. It was built by William Sandys, Knight of the Garter and Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain. It was sold by the Sandy family to Chaloner Chute in 1653, a Parliamentarian and Speaker of the House of Commons.

The Chute children were of similar ages to the Austens, and it was a family that Jane knew well. Although the distance from Jane’s home at Steventon to the Vyne took more than an hour by carriage, they visited often.

Jane’s friendship with the Chute family was through her eldest brother James. The boys often went hunting with the Chute brothers, and William and James became life long friends.

The youngest son Tom was ‘full of wit and fun‘, and you can imagine the children racing around the gardens and charging through the house on their visits.

Dancing at The Vyne

Passing through the front entrance, guests were greeted by a wonderful staircase, and Jane would have climbed these stairs to the dining rooms on the first floor.

Main Staircase The Vyne National Trust — The Vyne Staircase ©2019EmmaDarlington

Dancing at The Vyne usually followed dinner parties, and the carpet would have been rolled up and the furniture pushed back. In the letters Jane wrote from Steventon, she says that dancing at The Vyne was usually more of an intimate affair,

The ball on Thursday was a very small one indeed … There were but seven couples, and only twenty-seven people in the room.

A few years later, a ball at The Vyne seemed a more lively affair,

I danced nine dances out of ten, five with Stephen Terry, T. Chute & James Digweed & four with Catherine. There was commonly a couple of ladies standing up together, but not often any so amiable as ourselves.

James Digweed was a close family friend from Jane’s childhood, and you see how handsome he was in his portrait. William was the eldest son and inherited the estate when his father died, at only 19 years old. He went to Harrow, then Cambridge, and became an MP for Hampshire in Parliament. When his sister Mary married, he effectively lost his housekeeper.

He was 33, single, and needed a wife. There was great speculation and gossip amongst the Hampshire ladies as to who he would choose. As Jane was only 14 years old at the time, she was seen as too young and out of the running.

On one of his visits to London, William met Elizabeth who was the daughter of the Devizes MP Joshua Smith. Known as Eliza they married in 1793 and it caused quite a stir, as she was not from one of the Hampshire families, and a total outsider.

As such, there was great speculation as she what she looked like, and the Austen family were one of the first to meet her at a ball held at the Assembly Rooms in Basingstoke.

Elizabeth Chute Portrait ©2019EmmaDarlington

Eliza kept diaries and wrote that she was sometimes lonely, as William was usually out hunting or in London. They were a childless couple for ten years before adopting their three year old relative Caroline Wiggett in 1803. Her father was a Norfolk clergyman and her mother died in childbirth.

Caroline would often play in the impressive Gallery on the ground floor which was used as her playroom.

A Wiggett to a Workman

Caroline had always called William and Eliza her Uncle and Aunt Chute. Around ten years later when Jane wrote Mansfield Park, it was said that Caroline was the inspiration for Fanny Price. She later married Dr Thomas Workman.

Caroline Wiggett, Later Mrs Workman Aged 17 by Augusta Smith © The National Trust

Friends for Life

When James Austen took his father’s role as the vicar of Deane from 1791-1819, he dined at The Vyne almost every week and often brought his son Edward with him. They would eat roast beef, plum pudding and gooseberry pies, and Edward met the Chute’s niece Emma Smith during these visits. They fell in love and married in 1828.

It is in a letter that Jane writes about Edward, her fondest nephew.

His Aunts … love him better & better, as they see the sweet temper and warm affections of the Boy confirmed in the young Man.

Eliza that referred to the family as ‘the James Austens‘ and recorded the visits in her diaries that survive today.

The youngest brother, Tom Chute, was a bachelor and never married. He was an avid reader which may be why there are over 2,500 books in the Library today. You can see that some have centuries-old doodles in the margins!

Preserving The Vyne

The Chute family continued to live at The Vyne, and for brief periods part of the house was used for a girls school and later occupied by evacuees in the Second World War. Charles Chute passed the safekeeping of The Vyne to the National Trust in 1956.

Your Visit to The Vyne

The Vyne is a National Trust property and they have an excellent website which covers opening times, travel, etc. The Vyne at the National Trust

I have read Elizabeth Chute’s beautiful diaries, and you can find them at the Hampshire Cultural Trust

The Love of Jane Austen’s Life: Tom Lefroy

5 January 2023

Born in Limerick, Ireland, on 8 January 1776 (one year after Jane) and died on 4 May 1869, age 93.

At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea.
Jane Austen letter to Cassandra Austen, January 1796

Thomas Lefroy has long been thought of as the real life inspiration for Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice which Jane first drafted in her late teens. Jane tells Cassandra about her flirtation with Tom in a letter to her sister Cassandra written over two days in January 1796.

After graduating from Dublin’s Trinity College in 1795, Tom moved to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn. It was during this time that he visited his Uncle and Aunt for several weeks in December of that same year. It was during this stay that Jane and Tom met at a dance hosted by Jane’s friend Anne Lefroy. They were both 20 years old and got along well, spending time together dancing at balls that season.

Jane initially writes in the letter to Cassandra, ‘I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care sixpence.’

Thomas Lefroy Portrait from Author’s Photograph

Cassandra was away visiting their brother Edward at Kent, and you can feel Jane’s happiness at falling in love with Tom, and then her disappointment when it is over. It is thought that Jane’s lack of wealth played a part, as Tom had no fortune at that time as he was also the son of a clergyman.

Jane started writing First Impressions in October 1796 a year later, and finished it around August of the following year. It would later become Jane’s most popular and well loved novel, Pride and Prejudice.

In the first place I hope you will live twenty-three years longer. Mr. Tom Lefroy’s birthday was yesterday, so that you are very near of an age.

You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid 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. I can expose myself however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago…

We had a visit yesterday morning from Mr. Benjamin Portal, whose eyes are as handsome as ever. Everybody is extremely anxious for your return, but as you cannot come home by the Ashe ball, I am glad that I have not fed them with false hopes. James danced with Alithea, and cut up the turkey last night with great perseverance. You say nothing of the silk stockings; I flatter myself, therefore, that Charles has not purchased any, as I cannot very well afford to pay for them; all my money is spent in buying white gloves and pink persian. I wish Charles had been at Manydown, because he would have given you some description of my friend, and I think you must be impatient to hear something about him…

After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove — it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.

Jane follows her first letter filled with news of Tom with another a week later that talks of her fling being over.

Friday. — At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea. Wm. Chute called here yesterday. I wonder what he means by being so civil. There is a report that Tom is going to be married to a Lichfield lass. John Lyford and his sister bring Edward home today, dine with us, and we shall all go together to Ashe. I understand that we are to draw for partners. I shall be extremely impatient to hear from you again, that I may know how Eliza is, and when you are to return.

Tom married Mary Paul in 1799 who was the sister of a college friend and wealthy in her own right. The couple moved to Dublin and had eight children.

Tom became a successful lawyer, eventually becoming the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, the most senior judge in the Court of Queen’s Bench. He held this position until he was 90 years old, when by one account, he was still reading his newspaper without spectacles.

A year after Tom’s death in 1869, one of his nephews wrote in a letter, ‘My late venerable uncle… said in so many words that he was in love with [Jane], although he qualified his confession by saying it was a boyish love.’

Exhibition: Jane Austen in Love

The letter that Jane wrote to Cassandra about her flirtation with Tom is on display at the Jane Austen House Museum as part of an exhibition called Jane Austen in Love.

Alongside Jane’s letter is a striking portrait of Tom as Jane would have known him. You can gaze at a handsome young man with deep eyes that hold your gaze intently.

See Jane Austen in Love at Jane Austen House Museum until March 2023.

Travel

If you are planning a trip to Dublin, Ireland, you can visit Tom Lefroy’s family vault at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium.