Roy A. Adkins > Quotes

“At the time, sailors had various approximate measurements for distances that are no longer widely used: a pistol shot was about 25 yards, a musket shot approximately 200 yards and a gun shot about 1000 yards.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Nelson's Trafalgar: The Battle That Changed the World

“Nation would triumph over all its adverse Fortune. Some eminent”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Tsars were autocrats, often tyrannical, who held total control over everything and everyone in Russia,”
― Roy A. Adkins, The War for All the Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo

“I therefore pulled off my coat, helped to run out the gun, handed the powder, and literally worked as hard as a dray-horse.”
― Roy A. Adkins, The War for All the Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo

“A few years later, when she was fourteen, Holland elaborated: ‘She has a thirst after knowledge of every kind to the greatest degree. She has made great proficiency in Latin and Greek and is making the same advance in French and Italian…It is a pity she was not a boy for then such studies would turn to better account…I know not where this will end but is not a likely mode to get her well married.’ 56 Holland’s own daughter Margaret was given a basic education at home, with private tutors for music and French, but she never married. In spite of her education, Elizabeth did marry in 1825, at the age of twenty-eight, becoming the wife of John Sandford, Archdeacon at Wells in Somerset.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Some grammar schools were founded even earlier, in the medieval period, including Winchester College (1382) and Eton College (1440), which was granted a monopoly 10 miles around Eton ‘so it may excel all other grammar schools…and be called the lady mother and mistress of all other grammar schools’.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Poorer families could not even afford tallow candles, but might make rushlights, which were not taxed. Writing at Selborne in 1775, where he was curate, Gilbert White explained that after obtaining rushes for the wicks, their outer coating was peeled off except for one strip supporting the inner pith. After drying, the rushes were drawn through waste cooking grease and fat:”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“In Somerset, Holland grumbled about one educated girl, Elizabeth Poole: ‘This little girl is very clever and learns surprizingly and writes Latin letters but I should not like any woman the better for understanding Latin and Greek. All pedantick learning of this kind makes them conceited”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“The law governing marriage was Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, which decreed that after 25 March 1754 marriages were valid in law only if they had been advertised by banns or sanctioned by a special licence and were conducted by an Anglican clergyman in a church. Marriages also had to be recorded in a register. A marriage conducted in any other way was not legal, and the person performing it was guilty of a felony and liable to transportation.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Personal hygiene, or lack of it, would undoubtedly shock us today, with the overpowering body odours and the stink of clothing, stale with sweat and often musty from damp houses. Some people smelled rather worse than others, particularly if employed in a noisome industry. This was an era before anti-perspirants, before the widespread use of soap, before a time when people washed their bodies and changed their clothing on a regular basis, and when virtually nobody immersed themselves in baths or showers. Everyone would have smelled, even genteel women like Jane Austen, who in mid-September 1796 admitted to Cassandra: ‘What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Jane Austen’s England was not an overcrowded country – in 1801 the entire population was approximately that of London today.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Short jackets known as spencers (after the 2nd Earl Spencer who started the trend) 12 became popular from the 1790s. This type of double-breasted jacket had no tails, though they were often put on over a traditional jacket with tails.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“in June 1799 Woodforde wrote: ‘Very cold indeed again to day, so cold that Mrs Custance came walking in her Spenser with a bosom-friend.’ 27 He meant that she had a large handkerchief or scarf at her throat to keep her warm, a fashion that arose because of the low necklines and acquired the name ‘bosom-friend’.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“In June 1773 Mrs Austen wrote: ‘I suckled my little girl thro’ the first quarter; she has been weaned and settled at a good woman’s at Deane just eight weeks; she is very healthy and lively.’ 53 Deane village was 2 miles from their parsonage at Steventon, and years later James Austen-Leigh, the nephew of Jane and Cassandra, mentioned this peculiar start to their lives: Her [Jane’s] mother followed a custom, not unusual in those days, though it seems strange to us, of putting out her babies to be nursed in a cottage in the village. The infant was daily visited by one or both of its parents, and frequently brought to them at the parsonage, but the cottage was its home, and must have remained so till it was old enough to run about and talk…It may be that the contrast between the parsonage house and the best class of cottage was not quite so extreme then as it would be now, that the one was somewhat less luxurious, and the other less squalid.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“In 1709 Daniel Defoe roughly summarised the social strata as ‘The great, who live profusely; the rich, who live plentifully; the middle sort, who live well; the working trades, who labour hard, but feel no want; the country people, farmers, etc. who fare indifferently; the poor that fare hard; the miserable, that really pinch and suffer want.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“From the 1790s, as a protest against the French Revolution, fashionable women cut their hair short in sympathetic imitation of victims’ hair before they were guillotined.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“The Reverend William Holland, a Somerset clergyman whose background and status were similar to that of Jane Austen’s father, was forthright in his views about some of the lower classes: ‘They expect to be kept in idleness or supported in extravagance and drunkenness. They do not trust to their own industry for support. They grow insolent, subordination is lost and [they] make their demands on other people’s purses as if they were their own.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“whereas Jews and Quakers, exempt from the Act, were allowed to marry according to their own customs. Not until 1837 could couples legally marry in register offices, or in their own chapels if a civil registrar was present.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“The upper classes adopted affected forms of talking, which was mocked by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey, where the heroine, Catherine Morland, says, ‘I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible’, to which the well-read young clergyman, Henry Tilney, replies, ‘Bravo! – an excellent satire on modern language.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“The place is an austere, wartime England. In the north Hampshire village of Steventon, Jane Austen was born in December 1775, and just 12 miles away in the cathedral city of Winchester, she died in July 1817. Such a short distance separates her birth and death, yet during her lifetime of forty-one years she travelled more than most women of this era, westwards as far as Dawlish in Devon, eastwards to Ramsgate in Kent, southwards to Portsmouth and probably as far north as Hamstall Ridware in Staffordshire. 1 England was the only country she knew, and for most of her adult life, that country was at war.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“All weddings were morning events, since canon law decreed that they could be solemnised only between 8 a.m. and noon – a rule that held until 1886.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Better-off families kept their tea in special lockable tea-caddies to prevent it being pilfered by the servants. It tended to be used sparingly, so that it was made as a fairly weak drink, to which milk and sugar were added.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Along with their servants, wealthy families moved ‘up to’ London from their country establishments, renting a house or staying in their own property for ‘the Season’, which coincided with parliamentary sittings. Benjamin Silliman explained that ‘in England, down means from London, and up, to London: they speak of going down into the country, no matter in what direction. The Londoners talk of going down to Scotland. Is this a figure of speech unconsciously adopted because London is the great fountain supplying all the kingdom with streams of wealth and knowledge. Perhaps the country might dispute the claim.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“There was no tradition of babies being given soft toys and other playthings apart from rattles. Instead, they were sedated with proprietary soothers, especially Dr Godfrey’s Cordial. Such concoctions contained opium, morphine and a mercury compound like calomel and were widely advertised,”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Lighted candles were carried in holders to avoid spilling the hot wax, but walking too fast with the candle or walking through a draught could easily extinguish the flame. Outdoors, candles were put into protective metal lanterns (or ‘lanthorns’) with pierced sides or panels of thin translucent horn or sometimes of glass.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“In 1795 a tax of one guinea on hair-powder was made payable by the head of each household, and this triggered a radical change in men’s hairstyles. Instead of paying the tax, the Whigs cut their hair short, in a style called à la guillotine, after those forced to have their hair cropped before being executed during the French Revolution. Those Tories who paid the tax were called guinea-pigs.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“Ink could be bought in shops, but many households made their own. In 1805 a mineral agent called William Jenkin wrote down his recipe: ¾ lb. of Alleppo Galls – bruised (but not small)
4 oz. of Clean Coperas – 4 oz. of Gum Arabick
1 oz. of Roche Allum –
Put the above in 3 quarts of rain water; shake it often for about 6 or 7 days.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England

“Clothing for men and women changed markedly, in both styles and fabrics, over Jane Austen’s lifetime. Following the French Revolution grotesquely elaborate fashions gave way to naturalistic styles, imitating the Classical world. Ladies wore simple gowns based on Greek and Roman styles that were copied from the many archaeological finds then being unearthed at places like Pompeii and Herculaneum. Men’s fashions were influenced by more practical military dress, which resulted in sober clothing, more suitable for country life than the extravagance of the urban fashions of the preceding period.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“At the age of seven Jane Austen was sent away to Oxford with her sister Cassandra and her cousin Jane Cooper to be taught by a private tutor. 59 In the summer of 1783, after the tutor and her pupils moved to Southampton, all three girls fell ill with typhus, and Jane Austen nearly died. She and her sister recuperated at home and then joined their cousin in 1785 at the Reading Ladies’ Boarding School, but were removed at the end of the following year, putting a stop to their tuition. By the time Jane Austen was eleven years old, her formal education was over.”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

“In March 1810 Louis Simond gave a vivid description of the more normal winter smog: It is difficult to form an idea of the kind of winter days in London; the smoke of fossil coals forms an atmosphere, perceivable for many miles, like a great round cloud attached to the earth. In the town itself, when the weather is cloudy and foggy, which is frequently the case in winter, this smoke increases the general dingy hue, and terminates the length of every street with a fixed grey mist, receding as you advance. But when some rays of sun happens to fall on this artificial atmosphere, its impure mass assumes immediately a pale orange tint…loaded with small flakes of soot…so light as to float without falling. This black snow sticks to your clothes and linen, or lights on your face. You just feel something on your nose, or your cheek,—the finger is applied mechanically, and fixes it into a black patch! 66”
― Roy A. Adkins, Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods