Jane Austen gives us some idea of what the Regency upper class did with their free time. They played cards, danced, rode horses and went for carriage rides. Women practiced many forms of art, such as painting, needleworking, and playing instruments. But I did a little digging and found six lesser known, more unusual hobbies enjoyed by the Regency and Victorian ton. Check them out below.
- Shoe making
Yes, the rich could afford their own shoes, and, yes, shoemaking was a profession for the lower classes. But the rich discovered it sure was fun! They hired shoemakers to come to their drawing rooms to teach them to sew the slipper-style shoes that were fashionable—and simple enough for a beginner to make. Toolkits were also available for purchase.
One daughter wrote to her father that her mother was too busy to write to him. Her mother, she said, was “in so irresistibly attractive a part of the operation of sewing round her shoe, that she cannot tear herself from it, even to perform her conjugal duties.” Since performing said conjugal duties often led to death in childbirth in those days, I see the attraction of shoe making.
2. Picnicking in the Cemetery
A high infant mortality rate meant that church cemeteries were overcrowded in Victorian England. Parliament stepped in to solve this problem by establishing seven private cemeteries surrounding London. Public parks were rare, so these cemeteries, with their beautiful landscaping and mausoleums, became a destination for families and friends to congregate. Parents picnicked while their children played among the gravestones. Visitors also went hunting or for walks or carriage rides. In fact, cemeteries became so popular that guidebooks were published to direct people to the very best places where their children could picnic and frolic among the buried corpses.
3. Driving horses like the cool kids
It used to be that only working class men drove four horses—until someone decided that driving a one horse carriage through the park was for boys, but driving a four horse carriage made a man.
These manly gentlemen established clubs, and members drove their four horses and fancy carriages out to show that they were as skilled as working class drivers. (They had no passengers to distract them, and their horses were expensive, well bred, and easier to control, but other than that, it was totally the same.) Members of these clubs dressed in livery and greatcoats like working class drivers and imitated the working class slang. They even stopped at the public houses frequented by working class men. Legend has it that one man had his front teeth filed to create a gap that let him spit like a working class driver.
Isn’t this a funny hobby? I think of it as similar to the gangsta movement in the ‘90’s, when rich teenage boys wore grills, gold chain necklaces, and sagging shorts to emulate those oh-so-lucky teenagers who grew up in poverty and were pushed into gangs.
4. Taxidermy fun
Victorians, who were kind of into death if you hadn’t noticed from the cemetery picnics, developed an interest in anthropomorphic taxidermy. Never heard of it? This is the art of positioning dead animals into human poses. Scenes included ice skating hedgehogs, dueling dormice, kittens attending a wedding, and a classroom of rabbits. Queen Victoria described these tableaus as “really marvelous.”
They’re cute! But also uncomfortable.
5. Listening to political debates through a hole in the ceiling
In 1778, women were barred from the House of Commons’ public chamber, so politically minded women had to find inventive ways to stay informed. Their best option was to crowd into the attic above the Palace of Westminster. There, they could listen to the debates through a ventilation shaft that opened into the House of Commons below. The space was hot, dark, and cramped, but slits in the shaft allowed them to see bits of what was happening and enabled them to hear firsthand what was being said instead of relying on reports.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around how we used to lock half the population out of the right to make decisions in their countries—more than that, when we consider race—and it makes me value how easy it is for me to listen to the news in the comfort of my living room.
6. Fern collecting
Fern fever was so intense it had its own name: pteridomania! It was one of the few hobbies to transcend class and gender restrictions. It especially caught on among women, probably because it allowed them to be outdoors unsupervised.
It started when Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, a British botanist, started growing plants in glass cases called Wardian cases (later known as terrariums). Seeing those little plants in their cases looked so fun that the fad took off, and people everywhere were collecting ferns.
And the last one…
7. Seances!
Are you surprised to learn it was the Victorians who were interested in this morbid hobby? Spiritualism, a religious practice centered on contacting the dead, was a rare profession where women were preferred to men. This was because people believed a woman’s intuition and femininity allowed her to enter the realm of the dead more easily than a man. A woman was also more likely to let a spirit take control of her psyche. (I am a woman and beg to differ.)
There was a lot of fraud during these seances. Mediums often went into the closet, spoke to the dead, and emerged with ectoplasm (made with flour, water, and corn starch) coming out of their orifices. Chimney boys would hide inside the chimney flues to make rapping sounds, and ventriloquists made it seem as if whispers were coming from the corners. Flickering candles, invisible ink, and Ouija boards all added to the charade.
What do you think of the good times in Regency and Victorian England? Kind of makes you feel silly for sitting around watching your Netflix when you could be posing dead animals, doesn’t it? Which hobby would you go for?
I found this site on Victorian hobbies and this one on Regency pastimes useful when writing this post.
More Austen reading:
What’s So Controversial About the New Statue of Jane Austen?
A Poem About Darcy, a Rap About Emma, & Mr. Collins Jokes…this JAFF Will Blow you Away!
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