It might sound like speed-dating, Georgian-style, but posting a Lonely Hearts ad was about as far removed from easy access as today’s dating apps are from decorum. Dating via personal ads consisted of a lot of letter-writing, sighing, hoping, and waiting for a reply to one’s mailbox, which was often a coffee house or inn where single ladies of an upstanding reputation were not to stray. This meant enlisting the help of a trusted male envoy who could deliver and collect replies on your behalf, at least until the 1780s when shops, newspaper offices, and libraries became the main holding houses. Answering personal ads was a furtive business and good girls were not to be seen going at it.
The age of consent may only have been twelve at the time that Jane Austen was writing (first set out in English law in 1275), but female chastity, modesty and dignity were not only expected but required in order for a lady to make a good match. Prior to the Regency period, most relationship advice published in courtesy books was written by men, for men. But as women became the predominant writers and readers of their age, so did they take ownership of the courtship script. In a so-called model reply from mother to daughter on the subject of dating, published in The Complete Letter-writer in 1800, the mother advises: ‘Nine or ten years is what one might call the natural term of life for beauty in a young woman. But by accidents or misbehavior it may die long before its time . . . but keep your reputation, as you have hitherto kept it, and that will be a beauty which shall last to the end of your days.’
Reprinted with permission from The Curious History of Dating from Jane Austen to Tinder by Nichi Hodgson (Robinson Press), available from Amazon US, Amazon UK and Bookshop.