Georgette Heyer's Regency World (29 page)

A duel had to be fought within forty-eight hours of a challenge and at a time and place mutually agreed upon by the parties. Early morning was considered the best time for an engagement and most duels were held at locations just outside of town. It was the seconds’ duty to check the weapons, load each gun and mark out the firing distance—usually one of between ten and fourteen paces (a pace was about a yard). The distance selected by the seconds usually depended on the abilities of their principals, with a longer range for an expert marksman and a shorter distance for an indifferent shot. Lord George Wrotham held out for a distance of twenty-five yards in
Friday’s Child
which his friends considered most unfair given that he was a crack shot. Combatants saluted each other before ‘leeching’ or stepping up to their marks, saluted again, turned sideways with their arm extended and the pistol cocked, and waited for the signal to fire. Once they were in position a handkerchief was raised by a third party and the seconds, servants and surgeons moved at least thirty yards away, with the surgeons turning their backs until they heard the shots. At the drop of the handkerchief both combatants fired at each other or into the air if they wished to admit fault by deloping as both Sherry and George did in
Friday’s Child
. Each party was required to stay on his mark until both pistols had been fired and it was considered wise not to lower one’s arm, even after firing, until the other shot had been taken. In the event of a combatant being wounded before he had fired he was still at liberty to shoot, provided he did so within two minutes of his opponent’s shot. If a gun missed fire or failed for any reason no second shot was allowed. At the end of the duel both parties (if they were able) saluted, expressed their regret and left the field.

A duelling pistol was an elegant weapon, usually with a ten-inch barrel and a finely worked flint- or percussion-lock above a curved handle, and the guns were often finished in silver or decorated with delicate filigree work. The finest duelling pistols had a hair-trigger as part of the lock; this finely worked piece of craftsmanship, although an advantage, could be dangerous. The hair-trigger had to be treated with the utmost caution as, once set, it could go off at any moment. Combatants were always advised to keep their pistol pointed at the ground once it was made ready to fire. During the Regency, the most sought-after guns were those made by Joseph Manton, the most famous gun maker of the day. Named after their maker, these superbly balanced pistols were considered to be among the finest weapons then available, with an exquisite ‘feel’ that gave the shooter the sense that the gun was part of his hand. Although many men aspired to own a brace of Mantons, at fifty to sixty guineas for a pair of duelling pistols, only the very wealthy could afford them. In
The Foundling
, the Duke of Sale took delivery of an elegant pair of Mantons before setting out on his adventures. Joseph Manton also ran a shooting gallery in London’s Davies Street where sporting men could practise their marksmanship by shooting at rows of paper wafers attached to three-foot-wide, circular cast-iron targets. A man who could hit or ‘culp’ more than twelve wafers over a distance of fifteen yards in under six minutes (and reload his guns between each shot) was considered proficient. A man who could better such an accomplishment, and did so in the presence of spectators at Manton’s, would be termed a marksman and enjoyed the advantage of being unlikely ever to be called out for a duel. Although some women were competent with firearms, they were precluded from visiting Manton’s, something Charles Rivenhall in
The Grand Sophy
regretted when he discovered that his cousin Sophy was proficient with a pistol.

Business and the Military

The Postal Service

Letter-writing was an important part of Regency life although the cost could be prohibitive. Postage was calculated according to the distance travelled to deliver it—with the charge borne by the recipient rather than the sender. It cost two pence for delivery within London, increasing to a shilling to send a letter 400 miles, and charges were doubled if the writer enclosed anything in the letter or used an additional sheet of paper. The need to restrict letters to a single page often caused letter writers such as Arabella to cross her lines by writing the letter in the usual way and then turning the page sideways and writing at right angles over the top of the existing words. This could make correspondence very hard to read as Nell Cardross discovered in
April Lady
when she tried to decipher a letter in which her mama had crossed and recrossed her lines—Lady Pevensey had written horizontally, vertically
and
diagonally across the page. There were no envelopes in the modern sense and so letters were folded in a particular way and sealed with either a blob of melted sealing wax or a wafer (a small thin disc made of gum and flour which, when dampened, could be affixed to the letter). Members of the peerage and of both Houses of Parliament were entitled to have their mail delivered free of charge using a system known as ‘franking’, according to which an MP or peer had to sign his name and write his address on the outside of the letter to avoid the charge.

The City

The financial heart of London was the ancient City of London, originally recognised by charter in 1070 when William the Conqueror, deciding it would be prudent to treat London as a separate city, guaranteed the citizens their property, privileges and protection from aggressors. Governed by the City Corporation, the City included the ‘one square mile’ inside the ancient Roman wall and several areas outside it known as ‘liberties’. Throughout its long history the City remained separate, both physically and administratively, from the royal court, the parliament, halls of government and the courts of justice, preserving its own legal, political and administrative autonomy as a unique independent entity with the Corporation of the City of London as the governing body administered by the Lord Mayor, two sheriffs, twenty-six aldermen, and two hundred common councillors (elected by the freemen ratepayers). In
A Civil Contract
, the wealthy merchant Jonathan Chawleigh set his sights on becoming an alderman of the City and might eventually have become Lord Mayor. The City was a panoply of company halls, exchanges, banks, insurers, shops, warehouses, trading companies, shipping offices, markets and wharves, all combining to make it the great commercial centre of the early nineteenth-century world. The commercial heart of the City, fittingly represented by the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House (the Lord Mayor’s official residence), lay at the intersection of Cheapside, Moorgate, and Threadneedle and Lombard Streets. Here the City men (known as ‘Cits’) would meet in coffee-houses and at the Exchange to gather the latest financial news, discuss their affairs and execute their business.

The Stock Exchange

Besides putting their money back into their land, many in the upper (and middle) classes invested in the Stock Exchange. The official London Stock Exchange was founded just prior to the Regency in 1802 although its origins lay in the seventeenth-century coffeehouses. Anyone with money to spare could invest in the stocks traded at the Stock Exchange which consisted mainly of public funds, bank stocks, Exchequer and Navy bills, India bonds and annuities. The Funds paid a generally reliable return on investment of between three and five per cent but among the best-known investments were the three per cents or consolidated annuities known as ‘consols’. These were Government Bonds which paid a three per cent dividend twice a year and were considered extremely safe. For an investor such as Hugo Darracott in
The Unknown Ajax
with half a million pounds in the funds, this meant a return of a very healthy £15,000 a year. The price of consols could rise and fall but mostly within a reasonable range with few wild fluctuations. There were exceptions, however, as when, in June 1815, news came from Brussels that Wellington’s army was in retreat and Napoleon on the verge of claiming victory. Many City men panicked, including such savvy investors as Jonathan Chawleigh in
A Civil Contract
. With visions of massive increases in government expenditure on a protracted war or even (unthinkably) a French invasion, the City men sold off their consols, causing the price to tumble. A few canny investors, including Chawleigh’s son-in-law Adam Deveril, refused to believe in Wellington’s defeat, however, and seized the opportunity to buy the stocks at a greatly reduced price. When the news arrived only a day later of the victory at Waterloo, they had the satisfaction of seeing the stock price rapidly rise and thereby made a large profit.

Banking

During the Regency there were several banks favoured by the upper class, including one of the country’s most notable institutions, the Bank of England, which had been founded in 1694 by a Scotsman, William Paterson. Child’s Bank, where Lord Cardross did business in
April Lady,
was one of the oldest banks in London and had originally begun as a goldsmith’s shop. Francis Child became a partner before the business was moved in 1673 to its present site of number 1 Fleet Street and eventually inherited the bank. Although Child’s was a relatively small bank during the nineteenth century, the Child family amassed a large fortune which Francis Child’s grandson Robert Child famously settled on his granddaughter Sarah Fane who later became Lady Jersey, one of the patronesses of Almack’s. Drummond’s Bank was founded in 1717 by Andrew Drummond who developed a banking business from his goldsmith’s shop at the Sign of the Golden Eagle, east of Charing Cross. The bank had an impressive clientele and was favoured particularly by the Tories and the Scottish aristocracy. It was to Drummond’s Bank that Adam Deveril went to borrow £50,000 to invest in the Funds in an attempt to restore his fortune in
A Civil Contract
. Hoare’s Bank was established in the late seventeenth century by two goldsmiths, Richard and James Hoare, who, from as early as 1673, kept ‘a running cash’ (money lent on gold securities) at their shop at the ‘Golden Bottle’ in Cheapside. In 1690 they moved the business to a building on the site of the old Mitre Tavern at what were numbers 34–39 Fleet Street and hung a model of the family’s golden leather bottle above the entrance of the bank. Successive generations of the Hoare family continued to run the bank and by the eighteenth century they had amassed a fortune, acquired a great estate and joined the landed gentry. Horace Stanton-Lacy banked with Hoare’s and it was to the bank in Fleet Street that Charles Rivenhall took his cousin Sophy in
The Grand Sophy
so that she could present her father’s letter of authorisation. It was unusual for a woman to enter a bank or to engage in any form of business if she had a male relative—husband, father or brother—to do it for her but Sophy was an extremely independent woman who wished to set up her stable, buy a carriage and pay for any expenses she incurred while staying in London.

Money Talk

The Military

In the nineteenth century the British army had four main arms: the infantry, the cavalry, the artillery and the engineers. The largest section of the army, the infantry were the soldiers whose main job in battle was to advance against the enemy on foot, usually in lines or columns, and to fight until they were killed or wounded or the battle was won. During the Regency the infantry were mainly armed with rifles and bayonets and were most effective in battle when acting in determined, cohesive companies. The cavalry were the soldiers on horseback and included dragoons, lancers and hussars armed with swords, pistols and carbines (the lancers also carried lances). During the Napoleonic era the British used heavy cavalry for sudden charges and ‘shock action’, and light cavalry for fighting, pursuit and scouting as well as for situations where mobility could be an advantage. Dragoons (named for the short musket or ‘dragon’ which they had originally carried) were actually mounted infantry who fought on horseback and on foot. Lancers were first introduced into the British light cavalry in 1816 and were equipped with nine foot long wooden lances tipped with steel which they could carry into battle. The Hussar regiments were used for scouting and communication as well as fighting, and would charge into battle where necessary.