Regency Birthdays

[alias_sqbr]

My google-fu has totally failed me, for I cannot find ANY decent information about how birthdays were celebrated in the regency era apart from "they ate cakes, sometimes servants celebrated those of the family, and royalty made a really big deal about them

Comments

[sollersuk]

They weren't made a fuss of, which is probably why you haven't had any luck searching. If she has a rich relative who is still single and turning 30 (not a common situation to start with) everybody would keep quiet about it because she would be seen by many people as "over the hill" and doomed to be a spinster for the rest of her life.

[alias_sqbr]

*nods* thanks.

[smellingbottle]

The only reason it feels 'weird to ignore it' is because of our view of the significance of celebrating birthdays today, and thus anachronistic to your setting. If you're only mentioning it because you feel you should, rather than it constituting some kind of important plot point, then I'd continue to ignore it, as with the birthday of the aging rich relative. Agreeing with sollersuk on the relative oddity of the unmarried 30 year old rich woman - why hasn't she married? Whether or not she wants to may determine something of how she feels privately about being another year older.

[sollersuk]

Agreed. The only birthdays that mattered were the ones that constituted some kind of milestone - such as being able to marry without parental consent, or coming into one's inheritance - but it was the milestone that was important rather than the birthday as such.

Wasn't there a discussion about this some time ago in the context of birthday presents?

[azalaea]

Well, while I don't know the actual statistics, there are plenty of fairly wealthy and/or upper class spinsters of that age and older in novels of the period so presumably readers of the time didn't find them jarringly unrealistic.

The OP could look at the feelings of Elizabeth Elliot, the eldest sister in Persuasion about being 29 - she's worried about finding a husband, but not desperate, and is acknowledged to be actually better looking than she was at 19.

Also Emma Wodehouse actually intends not to marry at the start of the book: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/emmaoldm.html

[smellingbottle]

Sure, I'd be the last to say it wasn't unheard of. Bear in mind, though, that in both the fictional instances you've mentioned, Austen gives us a backstory and/or characterisation which explains Emma's intention not to marry and Elizabeth Elliot's continued singleness. Emma is only twenty one, naive and self-deluding - as well as apparently literally never having been in the company of a potential suitor, if we exclude Technically an Old Family Friend Knightley for the moment - when she declares she doesn't plan to marry. Elizabeth Elliot has been disappointed by her cousin, and is at least actively concerned about her situation, if not actually desperate, by the time of the novel's main action, and, aged 29, she realises she needs a proposal within the next year or two. Both are motherless and are very close to disastrous fathers - part of Emma's reason for saying she won't marry is because she knows her father could not manage without her, and Elizabeth seems to be essentially married to her silly, vain, snobbish father. Neither

[randomstasis]

I'm not at all sure about the 19th birthday- the birthday when she came out would have been celebrated, and I'm sure people would mention it, possibly even send her a sovereign under the seal? as later, but you might check here-
http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/social-customs-and-the-regency-world/

[syntinen_laulu]

I don’t agree - coming out wasn’t necessarily connected to a specific age, let alone a birthday. It wasn’t unusual, for example, to bring out two sisters or two cousins together, for reasons of economy and convenience, even if they were a couple of years apart.

Her parents would probably send her some money and/or a present on her birthday, but I don't think anyone else would be expected to. She certainly wouldn't be expected to buy a present for her employer. In the 18th and early 19th centuries presents tended to have a charitable rather than a mutual nature, so they were dispensed downwards from parents to children and from masters to servants: e.g. employers would give useful presents of dress fabrics and suchlike to their servants at Christmas.

[randomstasis]

Oh, no, you misunderstood me. I didn't say (and certainly didn't mean) that any specific birthday or age was the "one true coming out age", as you seem to think. But you should be aware that when a girl did come out, it was a big coming of age ritual, involving hair, dress and lifestyle changes, and naturally many related gifts of items necessary or suitable for a young lady, rather than a girl. And 19 would be very late for that, obviously.
Also, I disagree that her parents would send a gift, unless visiting- parcels were difficult and expensive to send, they were generally carried instead. Money would be much more likely.
Gifts to servants were most often hand-me-downs, rather than dress goods, too. And servants would frequently take gifts to parents and family after Xmas-hence, Boxing Day:)

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks, this is helpful. I think my character will be getting a letter or two from her family, but this may or may not come up in the story :)