DR TIM MOORE: Dancing was a very sexual activity because it was one of the only times you could actually touch someone of the opposite sex in a kind of socially acceptable way.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Was dating harder in Jane Austen's day than it is now?

Georgian and Regency England were certainly eras associated with love and romance but what were the rules you had to date by?

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history?

Join me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and moments that made us.

I'm historian Helen Antrobus.

Lean in for a tale from time.

Back When.

It may be 2025, 250 years since Jane Austen, author of six books, was born, but her work is now more widely known than ever.

The material for her stories came from her own life, the way she lived and where she spent her time.

She became an expert observer of people and dating rituals and used what she'd seen to create charming, intriguing and amusing characters, and follow them as they navigated the 18th century dating scene.

In this episode, we're meeting Dr.

Tim Moore, curator, historian and lecturer in Bath, a location that featured both in Jane Austen's novels and her life, to unpick just how you went about finding a love match when swiping right wasn't an option.

Jane Austen is an intriguing person to become one of the most celebrated authors writing about love, dating and marriage, because she never actually married.

DR TIM MOORE: She did actually receive a marriage offer and she accepted that marriage offer, slept on it and actually retracted the next day.

So it wasn't that she didn't have the option of marriage.

HELEN ANTROBUS: She found happiness with family and friends, most notably with her sister Cassandra.

DR TIM MOORE: She was really part of these kind of quite big thriving family networks.

She was a really fun and quite wicked aunt, actually.

And she also had a kind of series of female friends who she really took delight in spending time with.

HELEN ANTROBUS: She devoured books from a very young age and started writing when she was just a teenager.

Her skill was observation and creating characters from those observations.

DR TIM MOORE: Anyone who's read Jane Austen kind of knows that she's got such a keen, critical, satiric eye for all the kind of little nuances and jokes and details about the process of the Georgian marriage market.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And while the books may at first seem dated because of the formality of the way you spoke in the Georgian era,'Dear podcast listener, her subjects were such complex beings that you could not begin to decide whether to love them or to hate them'.

DR TIM MOORE: A lot of novels at the time had very virtuous characters who you are supposed to read and then emulate their behaviour.

So they always say the right thing, they always do the right thing, they, God forbid, would never kind of do something sexual or make a wrong decision in that regard.

Whereas Austen, what her focus is on is how hard it is to actually live out that behaviour in the real world when you are surrounded by all these attractive young people and you're expected to make a marriage and you might have these feelings and you might not know what to do with them.

That's why her characters feel so relatable to me.

They're confused and don't know what to do sometimes in a way that a lot of the novels of the time would never dream of kind of admitting or confessing to.

HELEN ANTROBUS: With her characters standing the test of time and the Georgian era being such a glamorous period, it all makes for very good costume dramas.

Think Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the lake in Pride And Prejudice, or Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma in Emma, and there are countless others.

Bridgerton is said to reference every Austen novel through characters in the series.

And let's not forget Bridget Jones's Diary, featuring Renee Zellweger.

Basically, a modern-day Pride And Prejudice, even featuring its own Mr Darcy.

Its author, Helen Fielding, admitting to Jane Austen's brilliance, when she set out to write the book.

ACTOR AS HELEN FIELDING: And so I just stole the plot.

And then the book increasingly began to mimic and nick stuff from Pride And Prejudice.

But it's a very good plot.

And I thought Jane Austen wouldn't mind.

And anyway, she's dead.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But the one thing they all have in common, the complicated, complex and emotional journey to finding long-lasting love.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

The first line from Pride And Prejudice.

So how did it all happen?

Who would make the first move?

Where and how?

What were the rules of the day?

Jane Austen was a frequent visitor to Bath, even before she lived in the city years later, and she would spend time at the Bath Assembly Rooms to socialise and to watch as the very first stages of a love match were beginning to emerge.

DR TIM MOORE: Assembly rooms were built all over Britain and their purpose was really, we might just describe it as a party house or a nightclub.

They were always grand and built to impress, there would usually be at least one ballroom.

Typically they also had tea rooms and they always had space for cards as well.

The Bath Assembly Rooms are unique in that they were really the most fashionable venue in the country at the time and one of the main things that made it different was the diversity of the crowds that it would attract.

People of all different kinds, different persuasions, different colours.

We know there was a really thriving black community in Bath.

It wasn't the only Assembly room in Bath But what it was known for was very cheap tickets.

It meant that even people who were just ordinary working people of the city could attend the same kind of balls that even the royals did.

So that's why it was such a kind of theatre of opportunity.

HELEN ANTROBUS: With balls on a Monday and Thursday every week in the season, and a weekly concert, there was plenty of opportunity.

And it's thought Jane Austen may have been attending dances and concerts every week, along with hundreds of others.

DR TIM MOORE: She visited many times in the 1790s.

She loves the big city.

She's absolutely swept up in the world of all the social entertainments and amusements.

If you were coming to the Bath Assembly Rooms, you would definitely have been chaperoned.

Most probably you would arrive here in a sedan chair, so you would have been carried in a little box with two poles either side, up the hill by two quite handsome burly men, often.

You would arrive at the front door, you'd kind of squeeze your way through to the main rooms and if you were lucky you would get an introduction from the master of ceremonies.

His role was literally just to know who was in the city, who was single, who was not, who would make a good match for who.

He could, for example, arrange dance partners for yourself.

But we also know that it was quite common for people to arrive at a ball without a formal introduction.

In Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, this is exactly what happens with Catherine Norland, where she first arrives, she's with her aunt, but they don't know anyone there, so they feel like they're imposing onto somewhere where they're not quite welcome.

Later, the master of ceremonies does actually learn about Catherine, and he is the one who introduces her to Henry Tilney, and that's the one that she marries at the end.

So this role of master of ceremonies, really kind of stage managing the social world of the ballroom, and managing the flirtatious potential is a really interesting role, I think.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Choosing a partner was as much a business transaction as it was about falling in love.

Women needed to marry to secure they had a home and financial support.

Men needed to marry a woman who could bear children, or who had money to bring to the partnership So people married within their class, or a notch-up.

And marriage was for life.

Divorce was costly and rarely happened in the Georgian era.

There was a lot riding on who you chose.

So while the Georgian party house was a lot of fun, there was also a lot of pressure and a lot of structure to proceedings.

DR TIM MOORE: It's a really interesting kind of very carefully curated program of events at a ball.

So it would start with what's called the'Long Minuet'.

Only one couple would do it at a time and this was where the kind of judgment side of Bath would come out.

You'd be observed for the things that you were wearing, the perfection of your steps.

Then you would retire for tea.

That would just normally be quite simple fare, actually.

Things like tea and cakes, there would be buns, the famous Bath buns.

We always knew there was jelly and ice cream and syllabubs and things like that.

And then the second half of the evening was the really fun rowdy parts.

The whole room was dancing, lots of noise, lots of confusion.

This is where really you could dance with whoever you wanted within certain limits.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And while it's the men that make the first move, always, it doesn't mean women would just sit and wait politely.

There were ways and means at hinting who you'd like to be asked to dance by.

DR TIM MOORE: So say you wanted to dance with a guy, you might introduce yourself to that guy's sister and then you might say, 'oh who was that guy?

I'd really love to dance with him'.

You would absolutely try and catch someone's eye, flash them a little smile, not too much but just enough to let them know that you're interested, that you've seen them.

To a very, very certain extent we think there might have been some kind of fan language, as in kind of people using fans to make different kind of coded signals to each other.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And if the coded signals worked and you secured your dance, well...

You were on your way, because it wasn't just a dance.

DR TIM MOORE: Dancing was a very sexual activity because it was one of the only times you could actually touch someone of the opposite sex in a socially acceptable way.

Even country dancing where you at most kind of link elbows or kind of touch hands.

It's not what we would interpret as very sexual but even that bodily touch on show meant that dancing was a really flirtatious activity.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But dancing wasn't for everyone.

Some people didn't want the pressure of performing in front of others.

DR TIM MOORE: One of the reasons why cards were so popular was that women could play cards as well as men.

So this is another place where you could openly sit down and talk to each other in a context that isn't chaperoned.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And of course, there are other ways you could meet.

Maybe at church or through family parties or dinners.

But when you don't have a phone, how do you make a plan for seeing each other again?

DR TIM MOORE: The Georgian equivalent of swapping numbers at the end of the night would be a verbal promise.

So you would say goodbye for the night, you would go home with your chaperone, but then the next day you might leave a card at that person's house and it might invite them to an excursion or it might be, for example, a kind of group invitation for the family for dinner.

Another really kind of quite intimate thing to do was to have a theatre box with someone.

You could have a very small select party which kind of means that instead of these kind of big family dinners where there were lots of witnesses, it was quite hard to get one-on-one time with each other.

You could spend some kind of time in close proximity.

So there were ways and means.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In Georgian times, promenading was a big thing.

It might just be walking to me and you, but it was so much more in Jane Austen's day.

You might be prescribed promenading as exercise, but it was also an opportunity to be seen out and about with someone, chaperoned, of course, and get the gossip among the town going that there might be a wedding on the cards.

There were plenty of places in Bath to promenade, the now world-famous Crescent being one of them, but this was also the era of the Georgian theme park, or Pleasure Garden.

DR TIM MOORE: One of the places that we know Jane Austen loved the most in Bath is Sydney Gardens.

It was one of the kind of most primary Pleasure Gardens in the country.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And it's just across town from the Assembly rooms.

DR TIM MOORE: So we're in the Sydney Gardens, which is a 10-minute stroll through Bath, and it was really one of the most exciting places in Bath.

There'd be huge orchestras, there'd be food and dining boxes, there'd be scores and scores of entertainers, illusionists, magicians.

There was a canal and a little lake where you could have pleasure boats.

And one of the things that Jane Austen loved about the gardens was there was a huge labyrinth, so a kind of maze of hedges.

And it was a really big labyrinth actually.

It's really interesting because you might not necessarily know that any of that history existed if you stroll through the park today.

We're at the moment literally standing on top of the railway, on top of a kind of bridge that goes over it.

So parts of the garden were literally kind of parceled up and sold off as the railway came through, as the canal came through.

It kind of began as this really famous venue that most people in the country would have heard of.

And now it's a very pleasant city park, but maybe you would never guess at how significant it was if you just strolled through today.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But stroll through in Jane Austen's day, and there would have been a lot to witness beyond fireworks, the shows and the performances.

DR TIM MOORE: Because Bath was so small, people would always notice who was talking to who, who was maybe linking arms with who, how close or how far their chaperone was.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And it was a place you could engineer bumping into someone that you might have danced with a few nights before.

DR TIM MOORE: There are all kinds of ways to get away with saying, oh, I'll be at the bridge in the gardens at 10am.

You could find a way to meet someone if you could think creatively and cleverly about it.

HELEN ANTROBUS: As the relationship enters this later stage, it would be scrutinised and monitored by the town and by the two families.

Gifts may be given and there would be letters.

DR TIM MOORE: But even letter writing to someone of the opposite sex was very scandalous.

So you could leave a card for someone or you could leave an invitation, but inviting someone for a correspondence was a very kind of scandalous thing.

Even in Jane Austen's novels, you can see that the times when, for example, Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility sends a letter, a direct letter to Willoughby saying, what's going on?

That letter is responded to very coldly and everyone is really shocked that she's had the guts to actually address a young man in such a direct manner.

Letter writing post-engagement was accepted.

But even then, all the normal rules about etiquette and chaperones, until the deal was sealed.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And it might be just a month since that first meeting, before the deal was sealed and the proposal came.

And then, the wedding.

DR TIM MOORE: A Georgian wedding would be a small family gathering at the church.

And crucially, the kind of people at the wedding would really vary.

It might be, for example, that one family was much more approving of the match than another, so it might be kind of much more heavily represented on one family side than another.

We kind of think this actually might have been a little bit of the case with Jane Austen's parents.

George and Cassandra Austen married very much for love and not money.

So Jane grew up in a family that had decided to prioritise romance over money.

So her characters really kind of have this struggle and some of the characters, like Charlotte Lucas, for example, in Pride And Prejudice.

She happily opts for a loveless marriage just so she can feel security.

She doesn't want the anxiety that Jane would have experienced so much of her life, about making the wrong match.

Personally, I think this is a really interesting reason why she rejected her own love match.

It would have been so much easier for her just to accept a match and have financial security.

But actually, she decides to risk not marrying someone that she didn't quite respect enough and she didn't really think would be a compatible match in terms of dispositions and personality.

I really think that in our modern day we kind of think the dating scene is complex but in the Georgian era all of these factors mean that it's really difficult and these things aren't talked about in the same way you know kind of just being honest about the way you're feeling you can't just kind of sit down and have an honest conversation with someone in the same way we can today, so young people navigating the dating scene in the Georgian era would have felt intensely insecure, intensely anxious, many of them absolutely wouldn't know how sex works.

So all these things were really scary and coming to Bath on the one hand might have been really exciting but on the other hand you have all these social pressures not just kind of getting your dance steps right in front of hundreds of people but also saying the right thing, kind of meeting the right person, not offending their family, kind of not putting them off.

You might in your heart of hearts know that you want a kind of good romance but do you actually just take the security?

HELEN ANTROBUS: Dating does seem very different in Jane Austen's day.

But, Dear podcast listener, should you not need to speak in such a manner as this, and you can forget for a while the complexities of Georgian etiquette, the dating scene isn't so different after all, because it's about people.

It's why her work stands the test of time, it's why her novels, her observations and characters continue to be reimagined on the big screen, the small screen, on stage and in new stories.

It's why she still today has thousands of fans, or Janeites, around the globe.

Bath Assembly Rooms is undergoing an exciting transformation to turn it into a Georgian visitor experience.

And if you'd like to know more about Pleasure Gardens, why not have a listen to A Garden Fit For Bridgerton, a podcast from the National Trust.

Thanks for listening to Back When, Jane Austen and the Georgian dating scene.

I'm Helen Antrobus.

See you next time.