The Art of Letter Writing in Regency England, Part II

After finishing the second book in my Widow’s Club series, I wanted to share my research on letters, letter writing, and the post during the Regency. My characters wrote a lot of letters (as did most gentlemen and ladies of the Regency) Since I wanted to share some of the more interesting things I found out about the art of letter writing during the era, I devised a short series of posts on this topic, and this month I’m focusing on quill pens.

Quill pens were the only writing implement available during the Regency era. Steel nib pens don’t arrive on the scene until the 1830s, so quills were necessary for writing not only letters but novels and other documents as well. The most popular bird feathers for quills were the swan, the crow, and the goose. Swan quills made a very broad stroke; crow feather quills made a very fine line and were often used by ladies who wanted to write an elegant hand in their letters. But goose quills were by far the most popular feathers for making quills. If you want to learn how the very long process of making a quill was accomplished, please see Kathryn Kane’s article “The Quill—The Regency Pen” for all the details. Suffice it here to say that one goose could produce 20 quills per year. With quills being the sole source of pens, most of the quills used in England during the Regency were imported from the Norse countries of Norway and Iceland, from The Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Russia. After the protracted processing, the quills were sold in stationer’s shops in lots of twenty-five or fifty. As the nibs wore down, the writer had to re-cut the quill with their own pen knife. Once it had been cut sufficiently up the barb, it was discarded and a fresh quill taken up. Jane Austen penned her novels with a goose quill, as did other Regency writers such as Charlotte and Emily Bronte. And while I wouldn’t suggest writing anything substantial with one now (even though I do write my first drafts long hand now even I, a hard core historian, would not attempt to pen my novels this way), I may just try letter writing with a pen—by candlelight—to give me that certain connection to my period, to go deeper into the experiences of my hero and heroine, and revel once more in the world of the past.

Discoveries in Diaries and Letters

Through reading diaries of those who lived in Georgian England one can glean any number of interesting things, things Georgians easily understood but which have passed almost into obscurity after two centuries of disuse.

For example, did you know that black wax was used to seal letters bearing news of one's death? I learned this in a letter in which the writer apologized thusly, "I have sealed my letter with black wax for too good a reason, so don't be alarmed. I have no red."

Illustration by Debra Wenlock

There's another factoid: letters were normally sealed with red wax. (This was verified by images on the internet.)

In the same book of letters, an aristocratic child wrote, "My mama writes in the carriage. She has a little table in it." Of course, I had to steal that to use in one of my books!

That same child, in another letter, references the real wood fires they only had at their country home. That casual comment alerted me to the fact they did not have wood fires at their town house in London. Of course, they used coal in the city! Had I erred in an earlier book? I certainly know better now than to have wood fires in London.

Some of the more interesting of those little-known occurrences of two centuries ago revolve around travel. Englishmen traveling in Italy during the summer slept in the daytime and traveled in their coaches only at night because the heat in the carriages could be too oppressive.

Perhaps the most interesting travel tidbit is how the wealthy Englishmen crossed the mountains. Their entire carriages had to be disassembled and carried over the passes by crews hired for this purpose. Crews also carried the aristocratic passengers along these treacherous areas by sedan-type chairs. Once the passes were cleared, the carriages were reassembled.

I'm currently reading the Grand Tour journal written by England's once-wealthiest commoner, William Beckford, and will share its enlightening facts in the next blog.

Cheryl Bolen is the launch romance author for Montlake's Amazon serial, Falling for Frederick, which begins Jan. 8.