Reading the Regency

The London Season

"The Fashionable Season.
The Marchioness of Salisbury returns to town this day. We understand the season will commence in a fortnight, and that it will be more prolific, in refined amusements, than any ever before known. The Countess of Jersey will dispute the palm; and it is supposed the two stars of fashion, Mrs Watson Taylor and Mrs Stuart Wortley, will be particularly brilliant and attractive."
[Morning Post, 8th February 1819]

The London social season was the time of year when the highest classes came together in town to mingle with friends and equals, attend parties or other entertainment, and contract advantageous marriages for their eligible daughters.

In countless historical novels, The Season also provides the backdrop for romance, drama and action.

Who could participate in the London Season?

"Colonel and Mrs Beaumont arrived, on Saturday last, in town, from their seat in Yorkshire: that very fashionable Lady's presence will add much to the eclat of the approaching gaieties of the season."
[The Morning Post, 26th January 1813]

The Season has always revolved around the highest classes in Society, although money and lineage also played their part. You didn't have to be a peer to enjoy the season but family connections were helpful and wealth—or the support of wealthy friends—was invaluable. Diana Beaumont, the wife of Colonel Beaumont mentioned above, was the eldest illegitimate daughter of Sir Thomas Wentworth. She inherited a large part of his fortune and Bretton Hall near Wakefield upon his death in 1792, and enjoyed her time in town during the season.

Spending the season in town could be expensive and some modern historians suggest that you needed an income of £10,000 a year to fully participate, particularly if you were using the season to introduce a daughter to society, but possessing a fortune was not enough on its own.

During the 18th century, fashionable events and parties entertained the Royal Court, the peers in the House of Lords and their families, Members of Parliament and their families, some of the wealthier and well-connected gentry, and the foreign Ambassadors temporarily residing in London.

However, at the end of the 1700s, fortunes were being made by the new Manufacturing class, and some of them could also afford to spend the season in London. This caused the social elite to close ranks, and make their entertainments more exclusive and private than they had been previously. By 1795, there were fewer open, public events that anyone could attend. They were increasingly replaced by private parties and public events whose attendance was strictly controlled through expensive subscriptions and vetted by committees to ensure the guest list remained exclusive.

In this situation, they would be more likely to welcome a peer with an income of three thousand a year than a commoner whose larger fortune was made through trade.

When did the Season begin and end?

"There is plenty of society for those who seek it in London, but the season will not begin this year till after Easter, and will be at its height in June."
[1st April 1813, The Diaries & Letters of Sir George Jackson, vol 2, pub. 1873]

There were no fixed dates for the beginning and end of the Season during the Regency era. It was only later, during Queen Victoria's reign, that the dates of the social season became a little more formalised.

One of the few published descriptions of the pre-Victorian Season comes from the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, who was living in Europe between 1826 and 1833:

"A London season lasts during the regular session of parliament, unless politics contrive to weary dissipation. Of course this rule is not absolute as the two houses are sometimes unexpectedly convened; but the ordinary business of the country usually begins after the Christmas holidays, and, allowing for a recess at Easter, continues until June or July. ... The shooting and hunting seasons occupy the autumn and early winter months; the Christmas festivities follow; then the country in England, apart from its sports, is less dreary in winter than in most other parts of the world, the verdure being perhaps finer than in the warm months; and London, which is to the last degree unpleasant as a residence from November to March, is most agreeable from April to June. The government is exclusively in the hands of the higher classes, or so nearly so as to render their convenience and pleasure the essential point, and these inhabit a quarter of the town in which one misses the beauties of the country far less than in most capitals. ... The men are much on horseback of a morning, and the women take their drives in the parks, quite as agreeably as if they were at their own country residences."
[England, with sketches of society in the Metropolis, by James Fenimore Cooper, pub. 1837]