Interestingly, Lord Blandford suffered no such social sanctions. When Lady Aylesford was divorced in 1878 on account of her adultery with Lord Blandford, her name was struck from guest lists and she was ‘cut’ in public. Vulgarity, ostentatious conduct and conspicuous attire were to be eschewed at all costs, as was any involvement in public scandal.

A provincial accent was to be avoided and the vocabulary carefully chosen to exclude words and expressions deemed vulgar in the ‘best’ circles.

In 1866, for example, Etiquette for Ladies pointed out that in conversation ‘the voice of a lady is. It was to advise the socially inept on possible pitfalls that books of etiquette proliferated in the second half of the nineteenth century. The penniless daughter of an underpaid curate would (provided she were a gentlewoman) have the entrée into houses that would resolutely close their doors on the pretensions of the millionaire’s family’. These would not visit the wife and daughter of such a man, or receive them in their home, if they lacked ‘refinement and culture. As the contemporary journal the Lady’s Companion commented on 10 March 1900, while the male members of high society were willing to associate with an ill-educated millionaire, that was unlikely to apply to their female relatives. It was women who made the ‘ordinances and regulations’ that governed polite society, through their power to give or withhold invitations and to choose on whom they would call or from whom they would receive calls. In 1855, the Revd Charles Kingsley in a Lecture to Ladies declared that a woman’s ‘first duties to her own family, her own servants’. Most were expected to find personal fulfilment within the home, as wives and mothers and as hostesses dispensing hospitality to guests. Domestic staff performed much of the drudgery associated with household chores, and left mistresses time to enjoy leisure pursuits. From a twenty-first century perspective, the lives of Victorian ladies appear privileged and comfortable, cushioned against the harsher realities of life.

Life As A Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn