What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

by Daniel Pool

  The title was always hereditary, with the exception of a very few “life peerages” created late in the 1800s, whose honors died with them. The title generally passed to the eldest son; in some families, if there were no male heir, the peerage ended. However, children stepped into their father’s shoes for purposes of inheritance, so that if the heir left a male child, the child would inherit the title. If the child died or there were no child, the title would pass to a brother of the title’s holder. Failing that, it would pass to another male still in the line of direct descent from the first holder of the title. In Can You Forgive Her?, this means that Jeffrey Palliser has a chance at the title once his cousin Plantagenet dies, as Plantagenet’s wife, Lady Glencora, calmly explains to a friend: “If I have no child, and Mr. Palliser were not to marry again, Jeffrey would be the heir.” This also accounts for the classic denouement of Victorian melodrama in which the impoverished American street urchin is discovered to be the new earl of Foxglove. Branches of the family might have ramified endlessly since the title was first bestowed, but if the urchin were the closest living male heir—even if he were from a very junior or “cadet” branch of the original family—he would inherit the title and usually the manor.

  A lady marrying a peer took his noble status, which is why the socially ambitious Lizzie Eustace pursues Lord Fawn in The Eustace Diamonds, even though she has already acquired a bundle of money with her first marriage and Lord Fawn is both dreary and penniless. “How could she have done better?” cries Mme. Goesler. “He is a peer and her son would be a peer.” That is, a man who married a widowed viscountess could only send out cards inviting you to dinner in the name of Mr. Smith and Viscountess Warwick. If Miss Smith married Viscount Warwick, however, she became Viscountess Warwick.

  But why would a peer marry beneath him? Partly, no doubt, because the landed estate that went with his title was often tied up in an entail that prevented him from selling any of it to raise money and was, in addition, often burdened with legal requirements to pay jointure and portions to various members of the family, so that a peer might be as interested in trying to land a rich heiress as she was in trying to land him. This was especially true because it was firmly believed that to be a peer required a fairly expensive keeping up of appearances, so much so, indeed, that at one time military heroes awarded a peerage were often granted great landed estates simultaneously to allow them to maintain the title in proper style. Lord Fawn, as Trollope points out, had estates that brought him very little, and, indeed, he “was always thinking, not exactly how he might make both ends meet, but how to reconcile the strictest personal economy with the proper bearing of an English nobleman. Such a man almost naturally looks to marriage as an assistance in the dreary fight. It soon becomes clear to him that he cannot marry without money, and he learns to think that heiresses have been invented exactly to suit his case. . . . He has got himself, his position, and, perhaps, his title to dispose of, and they are surely worth so much per annum.” “A rich heiress can buy a coronet any day,” wrote a shrewd American observer in the 1880s. “There are marchionesses now living whose fortunes fresh from trade saved the ancient estates of the aristocracy from the hammer.”

  Although titles like duke, earl, and viscount conjure up images of armored figures with maces and swords clashing on horseback, a great many peerages were not of very long standing. A peerage—which was always granted by the monarch—was given perhaps most often for service to the political party then in power at the behest of the prime minister. (Disraeli’s becoming earl of Beaconsfield comes to mind in this connection.) In addition, very wealthy lawyers, brewers (perhaps surprisingly), and lord chancellors (almost invariably) became peers, as did military heroes, like the duke of Wellington. To keep the peerage small and sought after, commoners were seldom made peers unless they were old and lacking in male children so that the title would die with them and keep the aristocracy unsoiled from contact with the plebs. (This exclusivity and the consequent desirability of the honor were strengthened by the fact that in each generation only one child, the heir, was ennobled, and the others all became commoners.) Titles were sometimes called patents of nobility because they were originally granted by “letters of patent,” that is, letters that were open to the whole world to see. In the case of two peers of the same rank, the one with the oldest patent took precedence. “His rank in the peerage was not high,” Trollope remarks of Lord Popplecourt in The Duke’s Children, “but his barony was of an old date.” Brand-new peerages were considered tacky. When a new lord chancellor was proposed for the peerage in the 1880s, he requested that the title be granted to his father so that the chancellor himself would be the second Lord———. Promotions could be made from within the peerage, with the titles previously attained trailing along after the new one. Accordingly, one might be Baron Little one year; Viscount More, Baron Little the next; Earl Stillmore, Viscount More, Baron Little the year after; and so forth.

  Below the peerage came the baronets and knights, who were much more numerous in nineteenth-century English fiction and were much less influential, at least at a national level, in English society. These ranks, if the word doesn’t have too disrespectful a sound, were the middle-class English titles, though, in the case of baronets, it is admittedly a very upper middle class that is at issue. A baronetage was hereditary like a peerage, but baronets were not peers and they did not sit in the House of Lords. Sir Leicester Dedlock in Bleak House, Sir James Chettam in Middlemarch, Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, and Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair—all are baronets. They constituted the upper reaches of that somewhat amorphous group called the gentry, and while they might sit in the House of Commons, they were more often preoccupied with local, “county” affairs.

  At the bottom of the titled ranks was knighthood. Knighthood was not hereditary, perhaps one reason it lacked some of the grandeur of a baronetcy. In addition, distinguished doctors or lawyers tended to become baronets, while knighthoods, the novelists tell us, were bestowed for reasons bordering on the comical on persons who were often—heaven forfend—“in trade.” Trollope speaks in The Warden of the pleasure of “a city tallow-chandler in becoming Sir John on the occasion of a Queen’s visit to a new bridge,” while in Great Expectations Dickens tells us how Mrs. Pocket’s father “had been knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point of a pen, in a desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar.”

  HOW TO ADDRESS YOUR BETTERS

  Life was full of perplexities for the nineteenth-century English gentleperson, perhaps never more so than when dealing with the aristocracy and other worthies. First there was the problem of addressing them in conversation; second, that of writing them a friendly note or sending them a properly addressed invitation to one’s ball. Both situations were complicated by the “faux-noble” nomenclature problem, that is, the use of such titles as lord and lady for members of the upper crust who did have status but were not real lords and ladies and were given these titles only as “courtesy titles.” How did one keep all this straight?

  By using these forms of address:

  I. In Direct Conversation:

  Your Majesty—to the king or queen.

  Your Royal Highness—to the monarch’s spouse, children, and siblings.

  Your Highness—to the nephews, nieces, and cousins of the sovereign.

  Duke or Duchess—to a duke or duchess if one were a member of the nobility or gentry.

  Your Grace—to a duke or duchess if one were below the gentry, and to an archbishop of the Church of England.

  My Lord—to a peer below the rank of duke and to a bishop of the Church of England.

  Lord—to address an earl, marquis, or viscount. The first two were often marquis or earl of someplace; e.g., “the earl of Derby.” They were not addressed this way in conversation but, rather, one dropped the “of” and put “lord” in
front of the geographical locale designated in the title; e.g., “the earl of Derby” became “Lord Derby.” A viscount had no “of” in his title but was simply “Viscount Palmerston”; however, he was likewise addressed as “Lord Palmerston.” A baron was virtually never spoken of or addressed as “Baron”; “Lord Tennyson” (as in the case of the poet who was created a baron) was the invariable way of addressing a peer of the lowest rank.

  Lady—to a marchioness, countess, viscountess, or baroness. It worked as it did for the males; e.g., the “marchioness of Derby” became “Lady Derby.”

  Sir—to a baronet or knight with his first name; e.g., “Sir Thomas Bertram.”

  Baron—to a judge of the Exchequer Court or, on extremely formal occasions, a baron in the peerage.

  Lady—to the wife of a baronet or knight. Here, in contrast to the way “Lady” was used for a peeress in the manner described above, Jane Fairfax, the wife of Sir John Fairfax, was addressed as “Lady Fairfax.” That is, Sir Thomas Bertram’s wife in Mansfield Park is referred to as “Lady Bertram,” and Sir Leicester Dedlock’s wife in Bleak House is “Lady Dedlock.” It is not merely contemporary readers who may find it difficult to distinguish between peeresses on the one hand and the wives of knights and baronets on the other when both groups use the title Lady. The female peerage were said to find the usurpation of the title by the lower ranks quite annoying; some apparently wished the wives of knights would resume their old title of Dame.

  My Lord—to a lord mayor, and to judges of the King’s Bench and Common Pleas courts.

  Your Worship—to a justice of the peace but probably only by his inferiors.

  Doctor—in the early part of the century, i.e., in Jane Austen’s era, the term would probably have been used for a doctor of divinity; it was still so used in Tess in 1891. Otherwise, it would probably have been applied to a physician but not to a surgeon, who would have been styled “Mr.” At the beginning of Dombey and Son, Paul’s birth is attended by “Doctor Parker Peps, one of the Court Physicians” and by “the family Surgeon,” who is addressed as “Mr. Pilkins.” In addressing a medical doctor, it was mandatory to use the surname after the title; it was thus considered rude to say simply, “Yes, doctor.”

  Squire—a term with no legal significance at all. Though they were often justices of the peace, squires per se were merely substantial landowners with a long residence in a particular country area, no more.

  II. In Direct Written Communication:

  the Most Reverend—to an archbishop.

  His Grace—to a duke or an archbishop.

  the Most Noble—to a marquis.

  the Right Honourable—to an earl, viscount, or baron.

  the Right Reverend—to a bishop.

  the Right Honourable—to a member of the Privy Council and, hence, to all cabinet members since they were privy councillors ex officio. Also, to a peer’s eldest son bearing an inferior, courtesy title of his father’s.

  the Venerable—to an archdeacon.

  the Very Reverend—to a dean.

  the Reverend—to a rector, a vicar, a canon, and all other clergy of the Church of England not covered under the above titles.

  the Honourable—to a member of Parliament.

  III. Courtesy Titles

  As noted above, these were titles given to the children of peers and some of their spouses as a matter of politeness, not because they conveyed any legal rights with them the way a genuine peerage did. That is, all the children of peers were commoners, including the eldest son, until he—or one of the others—inherited the title from his father or was otherwise granted a title when he became a peer himself. However, to distinguish socially the children and—in the case of male children—their wives, they were all granted courtesy titles, as follows:

  Lord—to the eldest son of a duke, marquis, or earl, who was also entitled to use the inferior title of his father, that is to say, a peer customarily bore several titles (duke of X, marquis of Y, earl of Z, etc.), using only the highest, and his eldest son took the next title down as a courtesy title until he inherited the highest title from his father. In Middlemarch, Celia Brooke, after marrying the baronet Sir James Chettam, reflects that it is nice her son is who he is, but “it would be nice, though, if he were a Viscount. . . . He might have been, if James had been an Earl.” And the oldest son of Plantagenet Palliser, the duke of Omnium, is called the earl of Silverbridge in The Duke’s Children, even though he does not sit in Parliament and is not really an earl. He is addressed as “Lord Silverbridge,” after the name of a borough associated with the family.

  Lord—to a younger son of a duke or marquis. Presumably because the younger son was not an heir, the “Lord” was simply tacked on to his Christian name and surname; e.g., Lord Silverbridge’s younger brother in The Duke’s Children is called “Lord Gerald Palliser.” There was no borrowing of one of father’s titles.

  Lady—to the daughter of a duke, marquis, or earl, with her Christian name and surname; that is, for naming purposes she was treated like a peer’s younger son. Thus, in Vanity Fair, we first encounter young Pitt Crawley as he is “said to be paying his addresses to Lady Jane Sheepshanks, Lord Southdown’s third daughter.” Just to confuse things a little more, “Lady” would also be the courtesy title of the spouse of a peer’s son bearing the courtesy title “Lord.” She would have been known as Lady John Fairfax, in contrast to the two no-courtesy style usages of “Lady” listed above.

  the Honourable—to all children, male and female, of the lower peers, that is, viscounts and barons, and to the younger sons of earls. In Persuasion, Sir Walter Elliot madly pursues an acquaintance with his cousins, “the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Carteret.” The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, in describing Mr. Rochester’s current womanfriend in Jane Eyre, alludes to the woman we come to know as Miss Ingram as the “Hon. Blanche.” Her father, deceased, was Baron Ingram.

  One occasionally sees the word “dowager” introduced into a title; e.g., the “Dowager Lady Ingram,” as Charlotte Bronte calls Blanche’s mother. This was neither a courtesy nor legal title but simply designated the widow of the titled male implied by the title, e.g., Lord Ingram, or, in the case of Viscountess Dalrymple, Viscount Dalrymple. After a certain point, the custom also developed of referring to a dowager simply as “Joan, countess of Warwick,” the first name being used to differentiate her from the current earl’s wife.

  In a not dissimilar fashion, you called yourself “Alfred, Lord Tennyson” to distinguish yourself from other Lord Tennysons in the lineage. Tennyson’s title also illustrates the tendency in the lower reaches of the peerage for names in titles to be drawn from surnames as well as from places. That is, dukes were always dukes of some geographical area—e.g., Omnium, Windsor, Rutland, Edinburgh—as were, generally speaking, marquesses. Earls, however, might be either geographical (Disraeli was earl of Beaconsfield) or use their family name (like Prime Minister John Russell, who became Earl Russell). The same was true of viscounts and barons.

  The contemporary reader may be confused by the different uses of the title of Lady. To summarize what has been said above, there were four distinct usages. If you married the baronet or knight Sir John Drudge, you became Lady Drudge (husband’s last name). If Sir John, who is, we shall say, a resident of Chiswick near the noble river Avon, then became an earl and subsequently a marquis, he would probably be known, assuming he chose a territorial designation, as the marquis of Chiswick and earl of Avon, and he would then be addressed as Lord Chiswick and his wife would become Lady Chiswick (husband’s territorial designation). Their eldest son, Horace Drudge, would now have the courtesy title Lord Avon, and his wife, by analogy to a real peerage, would be Lady Avon (husband’s territorial designation). Horace’s younger brother would be known as Lord Albert Drudge, and his wife, the former Gwendolyn Sprockett, would be known as Lady Albert Drudge (husband’s Christian name and surname). Finally, Hypatia—Horace and Albert’s sister—would be kno
wn as Lady Hypatia Drudge (own Christian name and family surname).

  If all this was simply too confusing, it was always comforting to remember that an overly ostentatious use of formalities and titles was frowned on anyway. After all, the queen sometimes made do with Ma’am as a formal title of address and the Prince of Wales with Sir. Only servants, suggested a contemporary book touching on usage, said “My Lord” and “My Lady” in every other sentence. It added: “It is, however, well to show that you remember the station of your interlocutor, by now and then introducing some such phrases as, ‘I think your Grace was observing,’ or, ‘I believe, madam, I was pointing out to you—’ ” Among themselves, and with friends and relatives, except perhaps on a first introduction, the nobility even dropped the “Lord” in front of their names in conversation, so that, for example, to his friends “Lord Derby” was simply “Derby.” (He would have remained “Lord Derby,” however, to servants, business and tradespeople.)

  Star, collar, and badge of the Order of the Garter.

  ESQ., GENT., K. C. B., ETC.

  What did it mean to put “Bart.” or “Esq.” after one’s name, to style oneself “K.C.” or “Q.C.,” or, like Lady Macleod in Can You Forgive Her?, be “the widow of a Sir Archibald Macleod, K.C.B.”? What did the mysterious letters signify?