|
 When
I started writing Mary Bennet I realized I’d have to research
quite a few subjects. For a start, I’d have to carefully re-read and
annotate Pride and Prejudice. And for the character of Mary
herself, I’d need to do a fair bit of bible-study — Mary quotes
liberally from the New Testament and the Psalms. I’d also have to read
up on, and listen to, 18th and early 19th century music, songs and
country dances. Plus I’d have to do some background reading on Britain
during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) and the so-called Regency period
when the then Prince of Wales took over during the madness of his
father, George III. And more particularly, I’d have to find out about
the privileged world of the English country gentry — their houses and
servants and horses and carriages, what they wore, what they ate and
drank, how they (mis)spent their time, etc.
A lot
of the material I could never use, at least not directly, but if you’re
making up a story set in the past — as well as stealing a set of
characters from another author — it’s as well to try and get your
research right. Even so, I’ve made mistakes. Most of these I’ve been
able to correct before they were immortalized in Bikwil, but a
couple have managed to escape the net.
The
first appeared in Part 1 of Mary Bennet, serialised in Bikwil
in May 2002. I’d assumed that the tradition of dressing baby boys in
blue and girls in pink was a very old one. I’d read in Flora Thompson’s
Lark Rise to Candleford (a wonderful memoir of 1870s English
rural life, the first volume of which was published in 1939) that the
farm labourers’ wives were lent christening robes by the local
clergyman’s daughter in which to dress their babies. The clergyman’s
daughter also made a new frock as a gift for every baby’s “shortening”,
and according to Thompson, these little frocks were “made of flowered
print, blue for the boys and pink for the girls”.
But
other books on children’s costume maintain that this way of
distinguishing the sex of a child only began in the 1920s or
thereabouts. The Workwoman’s Guide, 1838 (quoted in Cunnington &
Buck’s Children’s Costume in England 1300-1900) describes how the
baby’s gender was usually denoted by the placement of a rosette of satin
ribbon on its hood or cap. The rosette was worn on the left side if a
boy, and in front, if a girl. I’ve decided to play safe therefore and
exchange baby Elizabeth Bennet’s blue blanket for a pillow and dress her
in a cap with a left-sided rosette. (Mrs Bennet had of course
anticipated a boy.)
The
second mistake appears in Part 2 of Mary Bennet (published in No.
32 of Bikwil in July 2002) and concerns Lydia. It occurred
because I had not read P&P sufficiently carefully. Perhaps an
enthusiastic Janeite will find it out before I get a chance to correct
it in a future issue. |
