Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball

Pride and Prejudice was published 200 years ago, in 1813.

It's an archetypal love story,

but also a sparkling and acute dissection

of genteel Regency society that has captivated readers for generations.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man

"in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

But love it as we might,

there's a whole layer of Austen's nuance

which is lost to modern readers.

Austen's world was taken for granted by her contemporaries,

but it's surprisingly distant from us.

To understand her novel fully,

we need to re-imagine the time in which she lived.

In this programme, Alastair Sooke and I

are going to step back to try to understand Austen's world.

We're going to bring alive those details that have been

deadened by the passage of time.

And how are we going to do it?

With a ground-breaking experiment.

We're going to recreate, in the most accurate way possible,

the event which lies at the heart of Pride and Prejudice,

which drives the entire plot

and where the two main characters meet and spar - the Regency ball.

Film adaptations of the book have created

an impression of the world of the ball, but we want to know

what would have really happened when the candles were lit and the band struck up,

and in doing so, try to understand better what Austen was saying.

For one night, we will turn back the clock two centuries at Chawton House,

the home of Austen's brother, Edward,

and recreate a ball as Austen herself would have experienced it.

We will prise open the Regency wardrobe to feel

the clothes in which Austen imagined the Bennet sisters.

We'll go to the cookbook of her friend and companion Martha Lloyd,

to conjure the dishes she enjoyed, and we will listen to dances

set to music taken from the Austen family's own music books.

When darkness falls in the ballroom, it will be winter 1813.

By discovering the minute details of the period, the sights,

sounds and sensations Austen knew from her own experiences in the ballroom,

we will expose the hidden codes of Regency courtship rituals,

see for ourselves the complex hierarchies at work

and reveal the deep structure of one of the greatest love stories ever told.

After this, you will never read Pride and Prejudice quite the same way again.

Pride and Prejudice is a story of love against the social odds.

Elizabeth Bennet is a playful provincial nobody,

wooed by Fitzwilliam Darcy, a handsome, wealthy landowner

and they meet at a dance.

The ball is integral to the plot of Pride and Prejudice.

Dancing was a key pleasure of Austen's youth.

The ball was complex, cruel and spectacular.

We're going to create an event

central to the involuntary bewitchment

between Elizabeth and Darcy

and vital to the perpetuation of Regency society.

Ensuring we achieve absolute authenticity

-is a coterie of experts.

-Turn her around, quick, quick.

Former ballet dancer and authority on Regency dance, Stuart Marsden.

Keep moving up till you get to the end.

Melodies sourced from the Austen family music books...

This looks very similar to Austen's music hand.

..will be orchestrated by music historians

and played on original instruments.

Costumes will be created with assiduous attention to detail.

Foods the author would have tasted herself

will be cooked by a leading expert on Regency cuisine, Ivan Day.

This is a very challenging project.

I don't think this has been done since the Napoleonic Wars in this country.

Feasting our eyes on what Jane Austen saw

will bring the background of her world into pin-sharp focus.

By filling in the details,

the elements Austen didn't need to explain to her readers,

we will strip away the layers of history.

The village of Chawton in Hampshire, where Jane Austen lived from 1809,

resembles the fictional hamlet of Longbourn where the Bennet family live.

The village setting is important.

Things move very slowly in Austen's fictional world,

but they are minutely observed.

Revolution shadowed the Regency.

Civil unrest was threatened at home.

Cannons were booming across Europe,

but in Austen's fictional world, you can hear a pin drop.

With brothers at sea and a cousin guillotined,

Austen obviously knew all about the wider world

but in her fiction, she recreated that world in miniature.

When human happiness hung on the arrival of a letter,

a stolen glance in church or a misunderstood remark.

Austen lived and breathed her moment but remains utterly timeless.

Pride and Prejudice was prepared for publication in this cottage.

Elizabeth Bennet's world was on the upper fringe of Jane Austen's.

The novel was an inside job,

a witheringly accurate depiction of the competitive marriage market,

but also an analysis of the system that Austen was a part of

and whose importance she recognised.

The Bennet sisters don't work, but they do have a job, which is

polishing the accomplishments that will make them marriageable.

"A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing,

"drawing, dancing."

The Bennet girls are ladies in waiting -

waiting for Mr Right. But the young men are on a mission too.

Only marriage will secure their dynasties.

Will Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy plant their affections in Hertfordshire?

The community is agog.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man

"in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

That famous opening line expresses an essential truth,

not just about the Regency,

but about pretty much any era in recent human history,

which is that a single bloke with a whole load of cash

is most definitely a catch.

Mr Bingley causes a bit of a stir when he arrives in Meryton

because he is rich, but Mr Darcy, who's the son of an aristocrat,

is fabulously wealthy - 10,000 a year.

So both men are desperate to find someone who is going to bear sons.

In other words, it is not just Austen's young women,

it's also the young men who are under this intense pressure

to find a suitable mate.

But there's a problem.

All contact between young people was strictly controlled.

With so much at stake, contact between the young men and women of the gentry,

the landowning class of the Regency, was closely regulated.

But there was one place where flirting, intimacy

and physical contact was allowed, even encouraged -

the ballroom.

"Nothing could be more delightful.

"To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love."

The ability to dance was key to romantic success

and the movements of the dance mimicked the to and fro of courtship.

Clumsiness was sexual suicide.

So it's not surprising that it's in the ballroom

that the separate worlds of Elizabeth and Darcy collide,

creating the possibility for all that follows.

Their manoeuvring seems to be about the dance,

but beneath the manners, it's all about attraction and rank.

The novel's first ball is an assembly,

a public event in the town of Meryton.

Our reconstruction is inspired by the more pivotal Netherfield Ball,

a private affair.

The contrast between the rowdier, socially mixed gathering

that ladies called a "promiscuous assembly"

and the exclusive party of friends

would have been sharply drawn for Austen's Regency leaders.

Professor John Mullan has made Austen's life's work his life's work.

Society at that time drew quite a sharp distinction

between a public assembly and a private dance.

At the Netherfield Ball, the people come by invitation only and,

like any event that's invitation only, it has a higher prestige.

-Well, it has some exclusivity.

-Yes, absolutely.

So as a young woman,

-you might not risk dancing with the butcher or the baker.

-That's right.

In Meryton, essentially, if you could buy the ticket, you could go.

And if you obeyed the conventions, you were an accepted part of the event.

The Meryton assembly is potentially more vulgar occasion and of course,

Mr Darcy and the Bingley sisters do sort of look down upon

the Meryton assembly because of that.

News of a private ball would always start with a personal invitation.

Ours have been made with a press from 1820. Printing was expensive.

Even Mr Bingley's invitations would have been produced in bulk

with blank spaces for the date, time, and the name of the guest.

Invites would be sent to local dignitaries, parents and chaperones

and, most importantly, the genteel young of marriageable age.

Austen was 20 when she began work on Pride and Prejudice,

the same age as Elizabeth is when the story begins.

By then, both should have learnt the key skill they needed

before they could even consider

responding to an invitation to a ball. Dancing.

Our younger ball-goers are dance students.

Like polite Regency youngsters,

they're learning from a dancing master.

In this world, it's understood, Jane Austen doesn't have to tell anybody,

but we have to be told now that people are trained,

literally, in the movements and how the dances work.

Our dance master is Regency dance authority Stuart Marsden.

Rehearsals begin with a lesson in dance history and literature.

We will learn a dance called the Savage Dance,

which is an English country dance,

and, as Mr Darcy says, "Any savage can dance."

And we're going to do a dance called La Boulanger.

Mrs Bennet exclaims, "They dance La Boulanger."

One imagines that the Bennets,

even with their woeful lack of tuition and governesses

and all that sort of thing,

that they will have had a dancing master give them some lessons.

We will do Lady Caroline Lee's Waltz

and then we're going to learn instructions

from Jane Austen's cousin,

Fanny Austen's Lady's Companion from 1805.

And she stayed with her in 1805.

How central is dancing

to the kind of turning points of the novel itself?

I think the whole of the first part of the novel,

which sets up especially importantly the relationship

of Mr Darcy with Elizabeth,

it's all done through a series of dances.

Let's start with a cotillion, Jane Austen loved cotillions.

So we're going to learn Le Retour du Printemps, the Return of Spring.

So English country dances are longways dances.

It was traditional that gentlemen

asked the girls if they would stand up with you.

And they have the right to say yes or no.

And if it was tradition that if you said no, you would not dance.

That meant you weren't dancing at all.

Right? But just for now, find a partner.

Ballroom etiquette,

the person of the highest rank will dance closest to the orchestra.

In an essentially quite enclosed community

like this imaginary Hertfordshire town of Meryton,

it's the main sort of venue for people,

literally, trying out partners.

Sir William Lucas, he's a buffoon,

but he sort of comments on how good Elizabeth is at dancing

and it seems quite clear that she and Mr Darcy are good at dancing.

-So they're compatible?

-Absolutely.

-And when Mr Darcy...

-Physically compatible?

-Physically compatible.

The ball's going to be set in 1813.

And during this time, steps changed dramatically.

It was all because of the French Revolution.

Napoleon came into power and this whole noble dancing of baroque,

nobody could do it any more because all the aristocrats had been...

In fact, Jane Austen's cousin, her husband had been guillotined.

So the steps sort of changed over time.

So by the time we're doing the ball now,

we'll actually be doing what's called quadrille steps.

So we go skip change with the right,

skip change with the left,

skip change with the left, ensemble, ensemble.

You get this extraordinary effect in the novel

that would have been much stronger for her first readers,

who would've sort of seen the dance. They would've seen it.

Ready? One with the right, one with the left,

one with the right, ensemble, ensemble.

They would've seen the couples lining up

and, in a way, perhaps even kind of heard the music.

And yet, in the novel, there's this incredible focus in

on two people who could be in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

You know, from all the attention that is being paid to anything else.

And the novel mimics that extraordinary concentration

of them upon each other.

The dance moves are rather more complicated than I'd expected.

That said, there was rather an appeal to trying it out for myself.

It's fantastic. I've just arrived at the studios

to watch the very first dance rehearsal of the entire process

and I was wondering about what Regency dance would look like,

and it's very, very prancy.

There's a lot of skipping, as you can see, and in a sense,

maybe it's not going to look as alien as I thought it would.

Go behind. Number twos, move out!

Stuart's quite a taskmaster at times, which is a good thing,

because we haven't got very long to rehearse.

-OK.

-I'm actually sweating and I didn't actually think I'd sweat.

I was like, "It's going to be fine, a couple of partner work."

And I'm actually dripping.

I suggest you bring some Amigel next week.

You can feel it in your calves.

-I can't understand how they did it in that time.

-Right.

PIANO PLAYS

No. You're on the beat.

LAUGHTER

You're on the beat.

It's really hard, isn't it?

The steps were difficult.

And dance masters would publish manuals.

Many of them designed to promote their dance schools

and supplement their income.

Edward Paine's Dance Manual of 1814 lists prices ranging from

five shillings and sixpence for a single lesson

to one pound and one shilling for six lessons.

Dance tuition could be a lucrative business.

-OK, well done.

-CHEERING

Hey, hey, hey! Stop. You've got another seven to go.

-You're proper dancers.

-Yes. We're in training.

When he says, "Do a padaria," whatever it is, you know what he means.

And I'm still struggling with one, two, three and then, argh!

-You'll get there.

-And then there's about another 18 steps. Yeah, thanks.

(It's not easy.)

Right, lunch. Go for lunch. Go, go, go.

This morning, we've obviously done a few dances, the one I think I got...

-Two.

-Two? It felt like a lot more!

-No.

-The one I was doing was bloody complicated, I thought.

-Cotillion.

It's a real tour de force for the brain just to remember.

But dancers in Austen's time

didn't necessarily have to memorise every step.

They might rely on a cleverly-concealed crib sheet.

Here we go. This is a dance fan for the year 1792.

Hang on. This is a fan covered in music with the steps as well.

-With the steps on, as well.

-This is a crib sheet.

-That's kind of cheating.

-That's such a cheat!

They were common things.

Yeah, but they're paper, so hardly any survived.

These fans were the perfect tool for flirtation.

A temporary fluttering screen hiding the lips,

framing and eroticising the eyes.

Whilst dancing in Austen's era could be delightful,

it was also more relentless and gruelling than you might expect.

Making matters even more challenging,

your clothes revealed every mistake and misstep.

Assembling the authentic clothing for our ball

is Professor Hilary Davidson.

Many screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice

dress the actors in the height of Regency fashion.

This, though, misses a crucial point.

In Austen's time, the outfits reflected

the range of social ranks who would've attended these balls.

Social division by cut, colour and texture

would have been immediately evident to Austen's readers.

Do you think some will be more fashion-forward than others?

In this period, there's a far more personal input

into clothing styles than perhaps we're used to.

Because all clothing is made new.

-Very little is available readymade.

-Yes, it's bespoke.

Bespoke. So the fabric that you choose, the cut you choose,

the trimmings you put on the bottom of your skirt,

there's far more of a personal input.

Do you think people's position in society,

their age and I suppose their character,

would all be mapped in the dress they would wear for the ball?

It would, absolutely. And what's more,

people within the community can read that fairly precisely.

They all know exactly what that means

and how...what the story is behind the clothing.

-And that's the language that's lost to us, isn't it?

-It is.

Our ball-goers are being fitted for various kinds of clothing,

as they would have been in Austen's time.

Guests representing men who were fashion-conscious

and who could afford it,

will be wearing the menswear trends of autumn-winter 1813.

Colours are muted and the silhouette athletic.

Exactly the looks that attracted fellow ball guests

when Messrs Bingley, Hurst and Darcy

arrived at the Meryton assembly.

"Mr Bingley was good looking and gentleman-like.

"He had a pleasant countenance and easy, unaffected manners.

"His brother-in-law Mr Hurst merely looked the gentleman,

"but his friend Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room

"by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien

"and the report which was in general circulation

"within five minutes after his entrance

"of his having 10,000 a year."

Other guests will be a little more frugal in appearance.

But to modern eyes, they're all rather striking.

I like the look of it a lot.

So much, in fact, I'm wondering if you've got a spare one.

What does it feel like to wear?

It's very tight-fitting,

but it's not so tight that you can barely walk or barely move.

You still have that...sense of presence.

I have broad shoulders, so it fits very well, but, like,

it just makes your back just stand up rather than...

You can never slouch in that.

So maybe it was the ramrod stance imposed by this clothing

which lay behind the visual appeal of Darcy and Bingley

when they graced Meryton with their presence.

The clothing is rather more revealing that I'd expected.

It is very tempting to just keep your hands...

in, in...it feels like you need some pockets.

So men are going to be wearing stockinged legs

and low-heeled shoes.

We've got lovely breeches with a full front

and quite a complicated opening.

And then at the back,

they've got this little bit of room for adjustment.

There's a lot of room in here.

Often, men are just taking the long tails of their shirt

and tucking them between their legs to use for underwear.

And the other important thing about this

is that we're really starting to see, frankly, the groin area.

Bit of room there, yeah? And then somewhere in here...

If we take these trousers and have a look at one of the jackets...

This is big, isn't it? I mean, it's too big.

..what's happened is that the whole

front skirt of the coat has been cut off.

And this is a very new fashion.

What you really notice is the groin's visible

for the first time in a long time.

-Yeah, over 100 years.

-Exactly.

Our female ball-goers will all be wearing authentic underwear.

From corsets to petticoats.

The muddied hem of a petticoat was a plot device for Austen.

It allowed the fashion-conscious Bingley sisters

to mock carefree Elizabeth Bennet.

But it didn't bother Mr Darcy,

already electrified by her fine eyes.

I feel like I've gone definitely back in time.

It looks gorgeous!

But what was going on underneath the muslins?

Let's enter the mysterious world of lingerie.

It's often thought the women are not wearing underwear, but they are.

They're wearing at least a chemise, maybe cotton or linen

and then another petticoat on top

and then there's actually quite a lot going on below the skirt.

So all of this kind of mess would have been women's daily experience.

Although in the 18th and early 19th century,

people are obsessed with propriety

and the modesty of young women. Actually, they're knickerless.

And even when the knickers come in,

the legs are still open at the crotch.

You actually don't join up the crotches of knickers

until, I think, the late 19th, early 20th century.

So crotchless knickers were the norm.

Many guests at a country ball would have made their own clothes

or altered existing garments.

Hilary is hand-making one dress

that Austen, deft with needle and thread,

might have made herself for a ball.

Right. I'll be your dressmaker's assistant.

Tell me what to do.

So what I need you to do is if you can...just lift your arm.

This will be a dress that's been altered by generations of wearers.

A hand-me-down hybrid frock

featuring elements of early 19th century design,

but also traces of previous eras.

I've cut if off. If I'd used a dress from about 1800,

we'd actually have a narrower bust.

And we'd be having to add length onto it.

So, this is not dissimilar to, um...

a family at home, kind of remaking an older sister's dress, say?

-Exactly.

-Cutting it down.

-A lot of the value is in the textile itself, isn't it?

-Exactly.

Not so much in the labour.

And especially if you've got a good Indian muslin.

What I'm going to do, like they did at the time,

is kind of add a drawstring.

And I'm going to give you princess sleeves.

From about 1811, 1812, you start seeing these little puffed sleeves.

I'm going to use this as a base and then give you much puffier sleeves.

SHE CHUCKLES

Pin that in there.

Um...one of the big differences is

just less fabric in the skirt at this period.

-So a flatter fall at the front.

-Totally flat fall at the front.

Go on, give us a demo, love.

Ba-ba-ba, like that.

-Does that feel all right for you?

-Yeah, it feels fine.

It didn't feel at any point like,

"Oh, this might make me trip," or anything.

The point of all the clothing that ball-goers,

moneyed and less well off, would have worn,

was the public display of assets.

Financial and physical.

Real and imaginary.

-Are you going to dance?

-No.

Oh, come on. I'm Stuart, by the way. Nice to meet you.

SHE LAUGHS

Alistair gave it a go.

Like Alistair, I came to the studio

to observe the young ball-goers practising their steps.

But joining in for a moment, I began to feel a little of the joy

that meant the energetic Lydia Bennet just couldn't stop dancing.

LAUGHTER

I think I'm done for now.

The characters never laughed.

He's telling me off there because I got the giggles in it.

Laughing's always very bad in women in the past.

It's a sign of sexual availability.

You shouldn't show your teeth.

It's a sign of being garrulous, plebeian, vulgar.

But that's one of the reasons why I like Lizzie Bennet so much,

because she does seem to drive the plot with her own laughter.

So that's one of the things...her irreverence, I think,

is one of the things that makes her so attractive

and easy for modern audiences to digest.

Regency dancing, it turns out,

is anything but the prim and proper activity we see in costume dramas.

It was a chance to show off athletic prowess

and a prime opportunity for physical and verbal flirtation.

But of course, it didn't take place

in the airy spaciousness of a dance studio.

What were the actual conditions

in which ball-goers exhibited their hard-won skills?

Chawton is different from Netherfield Park,

but it is a house that Austen knew and loved.

She came here to enjoy the hospitality of her wealthy brother.

Just the sort of place, then,

where private Regency balls would have taken place.

Well, this is the space where we're actually going to put the ball on.

What a great space!

The thing about Edward Austen's house...

is it doesn't feel like it's been made into some naff country hotel,

it feels like I think it always has done.

Jane's house is just down the road and we know that she came here.

We don't know for sure she would've danced in a ball in this room,

but if there was a big social gathering thrown by her brother,

this is the obvious place to have put that on.

Even if she wasn't dancing, you can imagine her standing by the fire, drinking,

being the chaperone, watching, seeing what was going on.

It's not going to take much to make this feel as authentic as possible,

to take us right back to 1813.

Particularly because the whole thing's going to be candlelit.

So in fact, looking around,

the only potential problem might be these electric chandeliers.

Lisa White, who advises the National Trust on accurate illumination,

will show us exactly how a ball was lit two centuries ago.

-Splendid!

-Isn't it? It's beautiful.

-Yes, yes.

So, if you imagine that we're recreating the Netherfield Ball

and Mr Bingley wants to throw a really good party,

how's he going to sort out the lighting?

Well, if Mr Bingley was out to impress,

he would have lots of light. Especially wax candles.

Not just in the chandeliers, but all around the room.

And he would increase the light with beautiful mirrors

to reflect the light, as well.

Because artificial light meant social status.

If you could afford lots, you were obviously very rich.

Beeswax candles were the smart candles

grand people like Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy

and the Bennets would've had in their best rooms.

Servants and poor people lived with tallow candles.

They were cheap, they were made from beef fat or pig fat

and they were smelly.

It was a bit like living in a fast-food shop.

I love this idea that the candles

would've been a form of conspicuous consumption.

Because Austen is so attuned to all of those nuances of status,

it's quintessential Austen,

-and people coming would immediately have read the room?

-Absolutely, yes.

And very often, candles in the 18th century were sold by length.

And they would burn for four hours or six hours

so that you didn't waste very much.

And you can imagine if you were one of the young Miss Bennets

and you arrived for a party and there were four-hour candles,

you'd think, "Oh, no. I want to stay longer than that."

If you were Mr Bennet and arrived and you saw six-hour candles,

you'd think, "Oh, no! We'll be here for ever!"

The candles for our ball would have Mr Bennet in despair.

They'll burn for eight hours.

An event of the scale of the Netherfield Ball

might have been lit by up to 300 of these candles

At a cost of around £15, a year's wages for a manservant,

balls were expensive affairs.

After all the exertion of strenuous dancing

in a candlelit and wood-fired room,

perspiring ball-goers would have worked up quite an appetite.

So in Austen's time, the ball also included a chance

for the host to refresh his guests and show off with a lavish supper.

At our ball, the supper will be cooked

by leading expert on historical food, Ivan Day.

These are some of the recipes. A ball supper for 20 people.

That's it there, you see.

Amongst the sources for our sauces,

pies and blancmanges,

dishes of fish, foul and game

are recipes that Austen might have cooked herself.

I do stuff like this all the time.

Serving food in this very old-fashioned way,

which was called a la Francaise,

where all the dishes are put on the table at the same time,

but on a smaller scale.

It became extinct as a way of dining in the middle of the 19th century

because it is actually very tricky.

These young chefs that I've got are absolutely brilliant.

'They've taken on techniques that they've never done before.'

This is a freezing pot or a sorbetiere.

Don't get your hands cold.

We are going to make Georgian ice cream.

Food combined with the extraordinary decorative

arts of the table at this period is really quite excellent.

'I'm hoping it will be a revelation.'

That's really delicious.

One dish that was on nearly every ball menu was white soup.

Recipes vary, but a veal stock was a common base,

as were powdered almonds, pudding rice, bacon,

anchovies and cream.

Ivan's version draws on the cookbook of Austen's friend Martha Lloyd.

Pressured to set the date for the Netherfield Ball, Mr Bingley laughed

that he'd issue his invitations when he'd made enough white soup.

Our guests will experience a feast for all the senses.

But Elizabeth's supper was poisoned by the sound of her mother

boasting of daughter Jane's marital prospects

and the sight of Mr Darcy listening in.

The dining room is the great scene of humiliation for Elizabeth Bennet.

But food is drenched with ideas of status in the early 19th century.

Game is the great symbol of the gentry and that's why

Mrs Bennet invites Mr Bingley to come and shoot partridge on her land.

Partridge pie is just one of the delights that Ivan Day is dishing

up for our ball.

His recipe comes from the Housekeeper's Instructor from 1805.

This is very much a symbol of upper-class dining.

The pie contains four whole birds cooked in herbs, liver,

bacon and mushrooms.

Before serving, it's opened and filled with veal gravy and orange juice.

The prize inside these things is to stick in your fork

and pull out an entire bird.

What sort of opportunities do you think the food

and the eating offers Austen to display character?

The food is really important because there's always a subtext.

Food is a very important sign of status throughout the novel.

At the Bingleys' Netherfield Ball, they are going to have really good

food to show everybody their status and wealth

when Elizabeth eventually gets to meet Mr Darcy's sister, Georgiana.

This extraordinary display of food status,

they're given grapes and nectarines and peaches, which in Derbyshire

in the early 19th century is quite an achievement.

While some of the cooking could have been

done in advance, a Regency kitchen would simmer with stress on the night.

Wherever possible, Ivan Day is recreating the taste of the past by using

Georgian kitchen equipment.

But the ancient range isn't in working condition.

You are confident that despite using this modern

technology you're going to be able to recreate the taste of 1813?

Yes, but we don't want it just to taste like it, we want it to look like it as well

because this is going to be sitting on authentic Regency silver.

The spectacle of the food is almost as important as the way it tastes.

It's even more important actually.

For a ball, it's all about ostentation, surely.

You've invested enormous amount of money, and all that.

It's a total expression of your status.

What's interesting is if you've got a silver platter,

a highly ornate, artificial thing, and then you're plonking

on top of it a beautifully cooked bird, but you can see

the talons, the claws, the neck, the beak.

The trouble is, you are bringing your sensibilities about food.

A lot of people enjoyed actually eating the head of the chicken

because it cooks to a wonderful mush and you just put

it in your mouth and you suck the eyes out and the brains out

through the beak and it's a wonderful gastronomic experience.

I'm going to need the soup tureen first.

Ivan Day's 63-dish supper will be served on solid silver salvers,

platters, dishes and tureens, all treasures from the Georgian and Regency era.

Amongst the cutlery, spoons once used by the Prince Regent.

The hoard is in the care of Christopher Hartop,

an authority on English silver.

This will have to move up.

The savouries over, Ivan will tempt diners with jellies and blancmanges, or flummeries.

What I've got here is a really interesting mould

which dates from about 1790

and it's a little bit of a delicate operation.

What you're seeing there is what food really looked like.

This one depicts the cipher of George III.

I rarely get stressed,

but technically this is the nightmare one.

This is the big moment.

This is one of the most famous of all Georgian jellies.

It's called a Solomon's Temple.

This might have pride of place on the table.

It looks very different from the food that we eat now.

Sensibilities of people in the Georgian period, very difference to ours.

They have different expectations. But this is what we've lost.

This is the food that has been totally and utterly forgotten about.

Mr Bingley is really expecting a great deal from his kitchen staff

for what is the big moment of his year.

It must have been a great deal of tension down there in the servants' quarters.

Those classes above the Bennets, like Bingley and Darcy

and Lady Catherine and the rest of them,

they lived in a world that was just full of stuff like this.

So we've looked at the sumptuous food, the costume, the dance lessons,

the lighting, but what we haven't yet explored is music.

What did people really dance to?

Jane Austen was a keen musician.

Within her own collection of piano music are hidden clues

to the kind of tunes she may have had in mind

while writing the Netherfield Ball scenes.

The archive at Southampton University contains the Austen family

music books, curated by Professor Jeanice Brooks.

We know from her letters that Austen copied out sheet music.

Pieces in these musical scrapbooks

include tunes she probably played herself.

The crucial question is, does this volume contain anything

-actually written by Jane?

-Probably.

There are a couple that are a very good match.

This looks very similar to Austen's early music hand.

It's so tantalising if this actually Jane Austen's hand.

There is a glittering precision to that.

It's a very precise copy.

And in fact, one of the other nieces, Caroline Austen, talks

about how Jane Austen played from her manuscript books that she copied

out and she makes a comment about the writing and says it was so neat.

As if it were print.

Let's see if I can find the thing. You'll want to see that.

All right, brilliant!

That's amazing. Someone... What is this?

This is a profile of a woman, a girl. This is amazing.

Presumably this is someone who's got slightly bored whilst they're

transcribing music and they decided to do a doodle in the margin.

This is what I'm very fancifully calling my little Jane Austen

-musical portrait.

-Don't say it's fanciful! Let's tell them it's right!

-SHE LAUGHS

-We don't do that in academia.

I thought that was really exciting, because feeling

so close to Jane Austen's hand is a very rare thing.

Certainly, that is the very first time I've seen potentially her own handwriting, the way she wrote music.

For such a prolific writer, there is surprisingly little of her own

hand that survived. For instance, many of her letters have been burnt.

We don't actually have the first draft of Pride and Prejudice.

And it was so eloquent to open up this unprepossessing,

potentially uninteresting looking book,

with its yellowed old pages, it just felt so old,

and to suddenly recreate this sense of a whole community, a real social context,

which fired and enthused Jane every single day of her life.

In the piano music that Austen copied

so assiduously are the melodies she enjoyed.

There are classical pieces, folk songs and traditional airs,

and others to which she would herself have danced at balls.

Popular music at the time was widely collected.

But instead of being notated for orchestras, it was summarised for the piano.

To recreate the music of the ballroom, they have to be rearranged.

A task undertaken by Professor William Drabkin.

Naturally, he is using a piano from 1796.

The things that you've got here

are what I have done to some music that I was given.

I don't want to overdo this,

because after all, the focus is on the dancing,

not on the musicians in the gallery, wherever they may happen to be.

People come to dance

and the musicians are there to provide music for the dance.

They are not there to perform great music, if I can put it that way.

So, no flourishes.

HE PLAYS MUSIC

Ball guests may not have been concentrating on the music,

but they were certainly concentrating on each other.

Guests at a Regency ball knew that appearance was everything.

Austen tells how on the evening of the Netherfield Ball,

Elizabeth Bennet dressed with more than usual care,

a process that would have involved more than just her clothes.

For someone whose letters betray such a love of fashion,

Austen gives scant detail about the lotions and potions

that must have enhanced the Bennet sisters' natural charms.

But there's a clue to her ambivalence about artifice.

The sour Bingley sisters sneer at Lizzie Bennet's healthy,

outdoors-y complexion, so brown and coarse.

Make-up has always been risky. Too much was the sign of a trollop.

So did nice girls really reach for the rouge pot? It seems they did.

Running the cosmetics team for our ball is Sally Pointer,

a leading authority on the make-up of historical make-up.

-Do you make all these?

-I do, yes.

-So, you sit at home in your kitchen...

-Yep.

-..doing a bit of kitchen chemistry?

-Yes. I'm an archaeologist

by training and I research early recipes.

Most of them use ingredients that could be got fairly easily

and don't use any equipment that you didn't have in a normal kitchen

so it was accessible to fairly ordinary women.

One of the main features of the look are quite rosy cheeks.

We could use alkanet root. Little blue flowers

-but the root gives this lovely, clear, sheer red colour.

-Right.

This is cochineal rouge.

I've read many studies but I've no idea what they look like.

Each one of those is a beetle.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that

accurately-reconstructed cosmetics have ever been used

-on an entire cast.

-Oh, really?

I believe that this is making history, doing this today.

THEY LAUGH

And what of the men?

Elizabeth Bennet is initially interested in dashing officer,

Mr Wickham. Was his elan boosted by time at the mirror?

Did his cheeks match his coat?

We've got a redcoat!

Would you really have imagined that a redcoat would have worn

make-up for a dance?

Interestingly, small amounts of rouge turn up

on male toiletry accounts right through to the First World War,

-particularly on officers.

-It does seem to me...

-Are these stick-on sideburns?

-They are.

This is the period when the wig increasingly has been abandoned,

but there would still be an older generation

who would hang onto their wigs.

I believe we have one or two gentlemen who are going to be

wigged and possibly powdered.

So, representing the goaty old men of the...

-Sorry, representing the GOUTY old men!

-Yes, yes.

As the Netherfield Ball approached,

anticipation was frothing in the villages.

The thrill of getting into your party clothes is surely unchanged

but for a Regency dance,

that anticipation was rocket-fuelled by weeks of preparation.

We know from Austen's letters that she was interested in fabrics

but in her fiction,

she makes an interest in frills a sure sign of moral weakness

and that's why the younger Bennet sisters are slaves to haberdashery.

"The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton,

"a most convenient distance for the young ladies who were usually

"tempted thither three or four times a week,

"to pay their duty to their aunt,

"and to a milliner's shop just over the way."

'In the costume truck,

'Hilary Davidson is dressing our guests in the garments that

'would have expressed exactly where a Mrs Bennet or a Mr Darcy

'would have stood on the Meryton social ladder.

'The quality and style of clothes were then, as now,

'powerful social signifiers and Bingley's sisters,

'Mrs Hurst and Caroline Bingley,

'pay beady attention to what they and others wear.'

This is made out of silk. This is possibly Mrs Hurst or Miss Bingley.

Oh, really?

-Mrs Bennet talks about Mrs Hurst's gown.

-Yes.

-She's never seen anything so elegant.

-Yes.

So, Hilary, is this a simpler dress of the kind that perhaps

a Miss Bennet might have worn?

Still possibly quite fancy for a country ball

so I'm thinking this is a Lydia Bennet who, of all the girls,

loves fashion the most.

This is more like what Mrs Bennet would've worn.

-The cap is the sign of matronly modesty, isn't it?

-Yes.

You just see the transformation of how people treat you.

-You have a certain amount of authority, then?

-Yes, absolutely.

-Through your bonnet?

-Oh, yeah. Totally!

We're into more age-appropriate dressing here.

-Mrs Bennet's not that old, by modern terms.

-No.

In fact, I think people are surprised to learn

that she's only about 41 or 42

-and actually, often she's played by much older actresses.

-Yeah.

-Oh, wow.

She still has genuine claims to being, you know, alluring.

'Cotton, wool and taffeta whisper to the expert

'but muslin is the textile that most of us associate

'with the ladies of the Regency.'

This is a 19th-century muslin.

This is beautifully diaphanous and it is one of the great legends,

is it not, that women...these dresses were practically see-through

and the women might even wet their muslins to reveal their limbs.

You're not going to be wearing that to a dance or something like that.

It's an extremity.

Put a bit of water onto it and see what happens,

-like you've just been running through a fountain.

-Oh, yes.

Or Venus arising from a shell, or something.

If there really was this dampened muslin,

it probably wouldn't even pass in St James's. We're talking

private parties, where...

-VERY private parties!

-Very private parties!

Actually, you'd see everything through that.

This is the sort of ensemble that I imagine Mr Darcy would be wearing.

-Oh, really?

-I'm not sure he'd go so far as the red,

I think he'd be quite conservative in his tastes.

Look at the quality of the buttons, here.

They're not too ostentatious, and very well-fitting breeches,

which is of course a very important part of Regency men's dress.

-This is our Mr Darcy. So, £10,000 a year.

-£10,000 a year.

'Mr Darcy was extremely wealthy.

'The garments of a less well-off gentleman,

'like Mr Bingley's brother-in-law, are more service than substance.'

Perhaps the person we could pin this on is Mr Hurst.

Mrs Hurst is explained as marrying a man of more fashion than fortune.

You can see just how flashy this waistcoat is,

by comparison with our Mr Darcy's quite restrained one.

'Invitations to a country ball might also extend

'to the sons of local gentlemen.'

This is made out of wool and the colours are far more restrained.

This is provincial gentility as opposed to

-metropolitan fashion?

-Absolutely.

'Hilary has been burning the midnight oil.'

So, Hilary, can we at long last see the dress?

'Time to reveal the dress she's been making by hand.

'A hybrid of various hand-me-down garments that the Bennet girls -

'and Austen herself - would've recognised

'and at which the Bingley sisters would have sneered.'

-This is the little white dress of the Regency period.

-Yes.

You can make it as elaborate or simple as you want to.

Given that Jane Austen herself was good at embroidery, do you think

there'd be an expectation that you would improve the dress yourself?

If you were a good needlewoman, which you're expected to be,

it's one of the female accomplishments, you can

absolutely show off your work in your clothing.

So, who would wear this dress?

-I think this is an Elizabeth Bennet dress.

-Oh!

In the final hours before the ball,

there's a thrill of anticipation throughout Chawton House.

Austen was well aware of the tingling excitement

generated by waiting for an event that brought the possibility of

life-changing romance, delivering heat and light

in the dead of winter.

"If there had not been a Netherfield Ball to prepare for and talk of,

"the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a pitiable state

"at this time, for from the day of the invitation

"to the day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain

"as prevented their walking to Meryton once."

Perhaps we've neglected balls as arenas of...

not just social but sexual interaction.

Yeah. In 19th century novels, there are lots of balls

but in Pride and Prejudice,

it has a sort of minute kind of attention to the nuance

and gesture of every...

Every single detail is so dramatically telling.

No other novelist does it as brilliantly.

And there is this extraordinary structural thing.

They're a series of dances and you can see them manoeuvring

around each other, sort of denying what is becoming ever more evident.

Especially Mr Darcy. This absolutely proper person but actually, sensual.

And that the dance is the epitome of his mix of correctness

and restraint on the one hand, and...fervour on the other.

Like Austen herself, the genteel readers who first devoured

Pride and Prejudice knew the sights and sounds of the ballroom.

She was free to concentrate on the drama of emotion,

leaving modern readers with tantalisingly few clues

about the ball itself.

That economy can sometimes be frustrating.

Yeah, and trying to find out about the historical background

to things that happen in Jane Austen can be really, really important.

Because she is asking you to see things which she could be

confident her first readers could see, and which we can't see any more.

Austen's economy of style is particularly apparent

when it comes to the specifics of what goes on in the dining room.

The food we've prepared is like the clothes and the make-up,

almost theatrical in its flamboyance. The Netherfield supper

features some of the most important exchanges in the novel.

Now, we begin to see what the dining room might have looked like.

-You're all professional waiters.

-ALL: Yes.

Well, Ivan and I are going to try and make you unlearn everything

you've learned because this is going to be completely different

from any table you've ever served at.

We're going to have three rows of dishes laid out

when the people sit down.

At each end of the table, there'll be a soup tureen.

There are two soups. There's a choice.

I don't know how it was done,

but I would imagine one of you will be in charge at this end

and then the waiters will take the hare soup

to Colonel Blenkinsopp over here

and white soup to Jane Bennet over there.

You'll be able to do this,

just apply some of the common sense from your experience.

It'll be fun to see how you get on.

We're going to lay a fork on the left. To our eyes, upside down.

Blade of the knife facing into the plate.

I mean, I'm amazed at how many dishes are going to be on here.

The sheer logistics of it is what we found daunting.

Keeping track of each dish and then having to go down to the kitchen,

decorate it and then bring it up

and put it in exactly the right position is very, very complex.

The trouble with this sort of dining is that

no-one really says very much about it.

Jane Austen only gives us little clues.

So how are you so sure that what we're going to recreate

will be what would've been at Netherfield?

We can pick up things, for instance, in the literature about dining

which was published at the period. The trouble is it's open to debate.

The only way of finding out is to do it

and that's what this is really about.

In recreating the Netherfield Ball's supper,

we're hoping to bring to life this forgotten world

of Georgian dining which Jane would've been very familiar with.

Do you think it will give us a more nuanced understanding of the novel?

Of the whole milieu of this extraordinary period

in British history, which is one of our finest.

We've got a table plan, here. This is based on

one published in 1815, so we know it's pretty authentic.

As dusk approaches, and the beginning of the ball draws near,

one other crucial and surprising element has to be added

to the reconstruction.

Lisa, as you can see, we've got this electric moon.

Moonlight would've been extremely important,

not only to help light guests as they came towards the ball

but even more importantly for when they left.

The last highwayman to be hanged for his felonies was only

a couple of years after Pride and Prejudice was published.

The thin light of the moon was enough to make journeys safer

to and from the venue,

but the light inside the ballroom had a different purpose.

Film electricians are more used to putting light IN than taking it out

but the electric chandeliers must go for something rather older.

Lisa and I have got a little bit of light work to do as we create the

conditions under which Darcy first fell underneath Elizabeth's spell.

"No sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends

"that she had hardly a good feature in her face,

"than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent

"by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes."

Two hours after moonrise, our guests are gathering.

In the dreary winters of a small village,

a ball was a fairytale highlight in the enveloping darkness.

And out here in the hallway, the common passages -

we're in the 21st century, we're ready to observe

but as soon as anyone passes through this door,

they're in 1813, or as near as we can get it.

When Elizabeth Bennet arrived at the Netherfield Ball,

she was out to conquer the heart of Mr Wickham.

But a few short hours and just two dances later,

and her furious thoughts are all fixed on Mr Darcy.

But like all the guests, Lizzie came to see and be seen,

keen to please the man on whom she'd set her sights.

Everything that happens in the novel, all the romances

and a lot of the misunderstandings start at the ball and in a way,

Jane Austen is making fictional use of something which must have

been the case in a small town like Meryton.

This is simply the biggest event of the year.

It's the moment that lights the blue touch paper.

GUESTS CHATTER

The excitement is palpable, isn't it? The hubbub, everybody arriving.

-Yes.

-Is this a key moment of the drama?

Absolutely, it is all part of it

because you're seeing not just who's wearing what, but who's there.

So no guest list goes round the village?

Well, normally, there'd be lots of gossip, of course

but you're explicitly told in Pride and Prejudice that the Bennets

had been cooped up for five days by the rain and so Elizabeth

thinks Wickham is going to be there and she has no way of knowing

-from gossip that he's not going to be.

-Also, presumably,

-cabin fever is mounting.

-Absolutely, they've been pent up.

So it was ratcheted up to a new height.

You can imagine what state Lydia's in, can't you?

Pent up for five days, she's ready to go.

Coming in, they're all watching each other.

This will be the moment when you get the first glimpse

of the taffetas and think, "Will my own muslin cut the mustard?"

Absolutely, and of course, it's a big deal in Pride and Prejudice

because this is the Bingleys' ball and the Bingleys

-are London people.

-Mm.

-They wear more fashionable clothes

so these Hertfordshire folk are all sort of jostling

for their approval as well as trying to compete with each other.

I hadn't thought about this at all

but of course they'd need to change their shoes

because you can't walk through the snow in your dancing pumps.

You're not going to go dancing in a pair of really heavy boots,

you want to be changing into something soft and light

and just encases the foot. This isn't something we do any more,

we forget that they had this culture of changing the shoes.

This looks like the kind of thing that a ballerina might wear today.

But everyone's doing it, all of the blokes as well.

This is the origins of ballet shoes.

So, you would inevitably have your own pair of dancing shoes?

Of course, you'd be coming to the ball

with your lovely little bag of shoes, changing them

and you're ready to go.

Practically speaking as well, our ballroom's got wooden floorboards.

If you had heavy boots, that'd be making a tremendous racket as well.

You couldn't hear the musicians over that kind of noise.

Contemporary accounts speak of dancing shoes being

shredded in a single night through the exertions of the dancers.

It's also a kind of parade of social distinctions.

How you arrive at the ball is in itself significant.

Who has their own carriage? Who has to get a lift from somebody else?

The Bennets had their own carriage, they're actually quite well off.

But we're told that the horses for the carriage

had to be used on the farm as well.

So they're sort of slightly in-between grand

and actually shabby genteel.

HORSES' HOOVES CLATTER, WHEELS TRUNDLE

The carriage is one of the key markers in Jane Austen's novels

and in reality in the early 19th century, between really,

the wealthy and the merely genteel.

You need about £1,000 a year to own a carriage.

Because it's not just the carriage, is it?

-It's the horses and all the tackle and the stabling.

-Yes, yes.

A man is even linked to the nature of the transport he has.

How grand a carriage, how big a carriage and of course,

going to the ball, it's a simple fact,

do you depend on somebody else for a lift there and a lift back?

Are you going to have to leave when somebody else does?

Or are you going to be like Mrs Bennet,

who's in command of her destiny

and she specially makes sure that the Bennet carriage

is the last to leave?

GUESTS CHATTER, MUSIC PLAYS

The guests are presented to the host and hostess.

This was the moment when, at the Meryton Assembly Ball,

Mr Bingley made himself acquainted

with all the principal people in the room.

All this formal introducing, do you think it's significant?

I suppose it doesn't seem unreasonable

for the Netherfield Ball.

Dr Hannah Greig is a specialist in the history of high society.

Hierarchy pervades all the sexual encounters

in the kinds of community that Austen writes about.

This is, in fact, a private ball.

Isn't that a crucial distinction for the Regency gentility?

Yeah, there's a fundamental distinction. The private events,

it's invitation-only, whereas a public assembly,

it's much more mixed company.

There must have been lots of people who thought

they were better than the rest.

And Austen makes that very clear, particularly in Pride and Prejudice

where Darcy, at the Meryton Assembly, appears to be too proud

to participate in any of the dances

and he says, "I didn't know any of other women present

"so I only danced with Bingley's sisters."

-And as she says, "What, and no-one can be introduced at a ball?"

-Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen,

if you would like to be standing and form sets for the cotillion,

the Return Du Printemps.

Austen makes very clear that Darcy

and the Bingleys feel relatively close to high-ranking London circles

and that they had a knowledge of what it was to be fashionable.

This is the cotillion, the first dance of the evening

and this is the dance that I tried out a bit in rehearsal

and I can attest, it's hard work.

But then, the entire ball is hard work, with physical,

social and emotional investment and cost.

Cotillions were French versions of traditional English country dances.

The French tended to dance at home, in small salons,

and the square shapes of the cotillion

worked well in tight domestic spaces.

Their formations were more intimate and you were much more likely

to dance with people of the same rank and expertise.

MUSIC CONTINUES

John, does it make any difference to you,

seeing a re-enactment before you,

being in such close proximity with the dancing?

Yeah, it makes a real difference.

I mean, apart from anything else,

I've always laughed at Mr Collins for being such a terrible dancer

and Elizabeth suffering the first two dances with him.

But, actually, you feel bit of sneaking sympathy for him,

cos these dances are beautifully elaborate but really tricky.

You need to really learn them and it's not surprising

that he finds the challenge just much too much.

We should have some clodhoppers in there, don't you think?

Well, you can imagine there must have been a few people

who were not as proficient.

But I think, obviously, some of them were.

People like Elizabeth, you imagine that she and Mr Bingley

and Jane and Mr Darcy probably were very good at doing it

and, when you see them doing this, you think the opportunities

to make a Mr Collins of yourself are absolutely legion.

-It goes on for ever!

-It does.

It adds a new sort of sense, doesn't it?

For me, it does, that when Elizabeth is dancing with Mr Collins,

she's having to endure it for a long time.

Seeing this man do the wrong things and having everybody watch you

and, of course, watch Elizabeth and Mr Collins

and think of them as possible partners.

You could tell they were absolutely exhausted by the end of it.

They were tired. You could see.

Next, we have the Savage Dance and then we have the waltz,

which is very, very pretty, and I think one of their favourite dances.

Then finally Boulanger, which will KILL them!

You all came out looking...hot!

-I've literally never experienced that before.

-Just non-stop...?

We never, ever have done a dance that's longer than five minutes.

Ever. Like... And so it's quite...

-And that's just the first one!

-Exactly!

-That's the first one.

-Yeah.

You know Stuart was talking a lot about,

-"There's a lot of time for flirtation, for talking..."

-Yes.

Was there any? Or was it all just kind of like, dance, dance, dance?

There was, there was.

A partner that I had, there was a moment where we were just like,

"Hey, again." And it was kind of like flirty in that way,

rather than like making a move.

-It was kind of like, "It's us again."

-Who was that?

-Matt Jolly.

-SHE LAUGHS

-I hear you had a flirty moment.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Good. The ball is working! That's excellent.

-I think I can marry him.

-You should try the dance.

-You're right, I should try it.

-Maybe you should take...

Put on the costume and...

I have had a costume fitted and I am thinking that I should...

You need to, you need to find your wife.

-Maybe we should dance together. The waltz.

-We should.

-Shall we?

-Is that an offer? An invitation?

-I'd love to!

I look forward to dancing with you.

And you, too, sir.

LAUGHTER

Good.

'Everybody looks lovely. It seems to be pure pleasure.'

But, presumably, there are other tensions under the surface,

which, you know, we can't see.

Yeah, and I think that's actually revealed by a recreation like this.

This is more than just kind of a scene of romance

and young flirtations.

There's also a whole range of other sorts of social interactions

and connections that are being made or broken at a ball.

So perhaps a business transaction might be happening in one corner.

Someone might be trying to approach a patron

to try and enhance their trade.

There might be distant family members

trying to reacquaint themselves

with more privileged people within their family.

In a way, it's kind of a microcosm of society, then,

and all of the sort of social obligations and networks

-and alliances and tensions.

-Yeah.

Helping to lubricate those tensions -

liberal supplies of Portuguese wine and fortified Negus punch.

In the kitchen, Ivan is preparing a beverage for later -

a stimulant without which no Regency ball was complete.

I'm making punch a la Romaine, Roman punch.

And it's basically a mixture of alcohol - usually rum or brandy -

with lemon, water and Italian meringue,

which is basically egg whites

that have been whipped up into a real froth.

And then a very, very hot sugar syrup is dribbled in. Champagne.

And it's just frozen.

This is actually a refreshment that is going to be served,

perhaps in an interval.

And it had become really popular in about 1813.

This isn't the only frozen delicacy.

In the early 19th century, Italian eateries started to appear.

This fashion for Italian food may explain why Parmesan ice cream

features in Frederick Nutt's Royal and Imperial Cook book of 1809.

-Now, what flavour do you think that is?

-Cheese!

-Yeah, it is.

-Is it?

-It's Parmesan cheese ice cream.

-Is it really?!

-Yes.

-Very, very creamy.

Yeah, but they had pretty high-level tastes.

At least at the level of Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley.

It's nice! I like it.

It's really rich, isn't it? You couldn't eat a lot of it.

I'd better get on with lots of other things.

I think there's a little bit of an issue with the sturgeon,

which may be very urgent.

This noble fish will be stewed in a vinegar, lemon and horseradish stock,

as directed by William Henderson

in The Housekeeper's Instructor of 1805.

Sturgeon can grow up to 16 feet long. Even this one's a challenge.

Yeah, it's never going to go in there.

What I suggest is a bit of surgery.

We can probably ornament it to such a degree,

people won't notice it's rather a squat, short sturgeon.

In Austen's day, the fish was common.

But today, wild sturgeon are endangered.

Ours had to come from a fish farm.

-Hang on a minute, don't pull it yet.

-No.

-That's it.

There we are.

Look at that. No-one will ever know, will they? Look.

The fish reduction complete,

Ivan moves into the kitchen to turn up the temperature.

We want everything out on the table within the next 20 minutes or so.

The two hot dishes, that have to be ready first, are the two soups.

If we're going to get this stuff up there, we've got to go.

The team have worked on 63 dishes -

40 of them sweet,

23 savoury.

The proof of their puddings - and everything else -

is just two dances away.

Back in the ballroom, the dancers prepare for the second dance.

The Savage Dance was a craze in 1813,

taken from a song-and-dance routine

in a musical based on Robinson Crusoe.

Savagery on the dance floor stopped short of unbridled tropical abandon,

but there was plenty of opportunity for eye contact

and whispered asides.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Savage Dance.

THEY PLAY AN ENERGETIC TUNE

Are they flirting while they're dancing?

Absolutely, they're flirting.

There are these moments of formalised

but sort of quite physical...

Everybody's wearing gloves, you know, it's not flesh-on-flesh

but, still, these moments of physical contact and movement.

Jane Austen called it, in another of her novels,

"the felicities of rapid motion."

And doesn't Mr Darcy put his finger on it,

because Sir William Lucas asks him to admit

that dancing is one of the sort of polite accomplishments

of a civilised society.

And Mr Darcy says, "Every savage can dance."

He's saying that these genteel people

in this Hertfordshire town in the early 19th century,

they're actually doing something rather primal!

The dance that Elizabeth and Darcy have, she doesn't specify,

but it's a dance which is movement and talk.

And it clearly also pairs people off.

You see them in the ball together

and you sort of see them as they are throughout the novel.

Apparently resisting each other,

even being slightly hostile to each other.

The relationship proceeds entirely by resistance.

And it's quite striking, isn't it?

They have their most, in a sense, unguarded conversation

while they're dancing together.

Later in the novel, when they're in the same room together,

on their own, they're completely silent.

So it's as if they need the ball to sort of release those energies.

It literally acts out their mutual fascination.

It's like a fairy tale come true.

It's such a joy to see the dancers in the setting,

with the costume, the hair. It's superb.

It's an absolute dancer's dream.

It's been so hot and the whole room just felt

so much more romantic and my heart started to go in my chest

and I really felt as though I was falling in love with someone

that was meant to be a potential suitor.

It's wonderful how I've been completely transformed.

I never thought it would be like that.

To modern readers, the interaction between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet

at the Netherfield Ball does seem very, very flirtatious.

But do you think it's anachronistic to use a term like "flirtation"

-for the early 19th century?

-No, not at all.

To us, it seems like an incredibly modern conceit,

but it is actually an 18th-century word used quite commonly,

and particularly, actually, in reference to balls.

You can never be seen to be flaunting any kind of immodesty

by even seeming to kind of invite a man's attention.

Potentially, you're risking your reputation.

It's a difficult path to tread.

And it's interesting that, you know,

Charlotte Lucas suggests to Elizabeth Bennet

that maybe she should be slightly more forthcoming towards Mr Darcy.

Well, and also, doesn't she say that Jane should do the same

to Mr Bingley to secure him and that she should actually be warmer...

-Yes. Yet, yeah.

-..than she really is.

-To completely seal the match.

Which is interesting, cos there are these conduct-book rules

of how young women should behave.

Somebody's got to break the rules a bit

for a courtship to move forward.

It is warm in there. But it also looks beautiful, with the candles.

I'm delighted that I did get a costume

so that I can experience what the ball's like.

I'm actually feeling quite excited. Lizzie hates it.

Although everyone seems to be having quite a good time here,

there were all manner of disasters and social awkwardnesses,