British Regency - language and slang

Check out "She Stoops to Conquer." It's a bit earlier than Regency (written in 1775, I think), but it might help in terms of how household folk and nobility interacted; it's not too far off from your target era.

Ah, and it's early enough that there are full versions online. You can find one here: http://www.fullbooks.com/She-Stoops-to-Conquer.html

:)

Good thought! I do actually have a copy of that play somewhere about, I haven't read it in forever though.
Thanks for the link.

2005 - Pryde and Honour (Won)
2006 - Better the Devil You Know (Won)
2007 - Fata Quadrivium (Won)
2008 - ...Real life intervened.

Proud member of the Trebuchet Club '06 & '07

The gulf between even a minor Regency lord, and someone who is not a member of the aristocracy, is almost infinite. It does not matter how high up in the hierarchy of a house a woman is, if she is not a member of his own class, the gentleman will almost invariably consider her "fair game". In Regency households, it was more or less a given that the female servants were there for the entertainment of the men, including male guests, and they did not have the right to say "no" unless they wanted to be turned off without a reference. And if they got pregnant, they got turned off anyway. It was a miserable situation, one which was actually made somewhat better later on when Victorian prudishness overturned the casual sex attitude of the Regency. Your lady's maid would not have been of his lordship's class, and while sheer manners might have caused him to treat her with courtesy, in fact in most cases he would not have considered himself bound by any honorable code at all when it came to women of the servant class.

While traveling in Europe in 1816 with Lord Byron, his physician John Polidori kept a journal which survives in expurgated form today. He states that in one hotel, as soon as they reached the hotel, "His lordship fell on the chambermaid like a thunderbolt". One reads into that the fact that the chambermaid was, essentially, raped, and no one thought twice about it. Byron is an extreme example, but he's still an example of the Regency buck's attitude towards servants; other men in his time and class would not have condemned him for his actions.

You asked for modes of address: in 1816, Claire Clairmont (sister of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) was having an affair with Lord Byron. Despite their intimate relations, she addressed him to his face as Lord Byron or your lordship. God knows what they called each other in bed, but out of it he insisted on being addressed by his title. Under no circumstances would a Regency lord of any rank allow a servant to address him by his given name; even the Duke of Clarence, later William IV, who lived for 20 years with a mistress who bore him 10 illegitimate children, was addressed by her as "Duke".

The trouble with looking to Austen for one's information about Regency Britain is that, as you note, she is writing from the point of view of the middle class. Our culture has inherited the attitudes of that growing middle class, but in fact the aristocracy of the time lived under a very different code. They were the lords of the earth and they acted like it; the concerns of the middle class with reputation, respectability, etc were alien to the aristocracy. Prinny (the prince Regent) and his companions were some of the most notorious rakes of the time; his own brother was suspected of murdering his own valet in a homosexual rage, incest with his sister, and assaulting other men's wives. In short, it was no-holds-barred in that set. Far from being bribed to seduce a lord, your lady's maid might have had all she could handle just fending them off.

Forget writing what you know. Write what you imagine.