The Very Easy Life of Jane's Thimble

(Elizabeth took up some needlework and was sufficiently amused Part 2--See Part 3 here.)

Penelope Bryde's "pamphlet" was brought out in a new edition in 2008 amid Jane-inspired madness--under a new title that ignores the needlework section entirely. And, indeed, that section is a mere 15 small pages. I learned that ladies of the era were no longer making lace, as it had just begun to be mass-produced by machine. They were likely, however, to have worked white embroidery on their own white muslin dresses, which is why they would hide their work in their baskets when gentlemen approached. I did not figure out what tambour is though I read a page-long description. I learned that knitting was only for the old or the desperate (Mrs. Smith in Persuasion who makes money by her needlework). And I learned that Bryde considers Austen to have been herself a truly accomplished domestic artist--even by Caroline Bingley's strict definition of the term. The hottest trend was apparently satin-stitch embroidery of which she created some of the finest surviving examples from the era. And how she found the time for it all? I suppose all those hours in the parlour when she couldn't be writing could be filled with listening as long as her hands were busy. But honestly, she sure got a lot done. "I wish I could help you in your Needlework," she wrote to Cassandra. "I have two hands & a new Thimble that lead a very easy life."

But I am mid-way through Sense and Sensibility and I am befuddled by a filigree basket that Elinor helps Lucy Steele to work by rolling paper for her. What could this be?

Elizabeth took up some needlework and was sufficiently amused…

Unoriginally enough, I am obsessed with Jane Austen. I’ve read it, juvenalia and all, many times. I created a shadow box diorama of the Bennet parlor when I was 13, and was forced to do quite a lot of pre-google research on furnishings of the time. I know a great deal about the fashions as well, and thanks to a nice fundamentalist Christian boy in Moscow who was writing a Marxist Master’s thesis on her, I know what kind and how many invisible servants must have supported the households. Thanks to John Sutherland's wonderful and ridiculous books, I know a bit about which Italian phrases were hopelessly passe and that the trade that took Fanny's uncle to the West Indies had to have been in slaves.

What I wonder, and what is under-depicted in the movies, is the kind of needlework they’re all plying away at constantly, with varying levels of competence and fatigue. I believe they sometimes made little footstool covers, which I imagine to be of this kind of work (I don’t really know how this cushion was created or when--it came from Scott's Mom.) I think there’s also some netting that happens, which I imagine to be a sort of tatting or lace creation. I would like to know. Do you?

I don’t think quilting is ever referred to, though Jane and her sister Cassandra created this beauty, which would have been absolutely painful to complete by hand. Can’t imagine it. If you want to make your own, there are directions online, but few images of what the ladies would have been doing otherwise. One Penelope Bryde seems to have published a pamphlet entitled “A Frivolous Distinction: Fashion and Needlework in the Works of Jane Austen” which is long out of print, and which I’ll bet is more about fashion (Mrs. Norris’s green baize—weird choice, used for covering billiard tables!) than needlework.

I have learned that the Regency lady would definitely have a small pair of gold embroidery scissors shaped like a stork—like mine! And also that pirates (and other sailors) often took up embroidery during long journeys. They had to be proficient with a needle to keep their clothes together, and with little else to do, needlework presented itself.

Any more information from my well-read friends? Or would anyone like to catalog all of the references to needlework in the big six? We could collaborate on a study…