Author guest post from Anne Glover.

The Prince of Wales’ penchant for fashion, gaming, womanising, and parties have imbued the sentimental casting of the long Regency era, when he reigned as the Regent, as a time of decadence and luxury. Dandyism flourished under the Prince’s influence, a common symbol of the timeⁱ,despite how Brummel’s more steadying influence of subtle masculinity was equally as prominent; Brummel was arguably the antithesis of the imagined Dandy, wearing staid and dark colours compared with a flamboyant devotion to fashion and appearance. While there was certain an element of decadence, even in the masquerade, the production of these events was decidedly more clinical than the image of a Byronicⁱⁱ, bacchanalian fantasy portrayed both in modern and Regency contemporary descriptions.

The production of masquerades tells us something of the realities of the Regency: their influence on the military and the empire, the playacting of social class mixing, and the increasing emphasis on spectacle to replace any real risk or scandal within the experience of a masked ball. No doubt there was some lewd, lascivious, and drunken behaviour, particularly for the venues that attracted young bucks. But by in large, the experiences were a caricature rather than a facsimile of the Georgian version, a contrast as stark as one between Brummel and the Prince’s set.

Perhaps the most decadent aspects of masquerade were the expense of production, an overabundance of rich foods that would often weigh the supper tables down and end up in piles of waste. Or the extensive lighting to mimic daylight with a variety of oil and glass lamps and chandeliers. But these were rites of passage, symbols themselves of a luxurious age the event producers were forced to reproduce or face scathing send ups in the newspapers the following week, a stroke of the pen gleefully declaring the event ill managed, dull, or trite. A careful study reveals that these features were as fundamental and artificial as the hundreds of flowers mixed in with real blossoms to give these events the romantic scenery audiences were hungry for. Masquerades were, after all, a money-making endeavour and so reinvention was only for the leaders of society, like Wellington, who introduced the novel idea of a mask-less fancy dress ball.

The Regency masquerade is fascinating because it bears all the hallmarks of being a riot of the senses, yet accounts of these events would have them nothing more than commonplace, and even a little trite. Yet like other aspects of culture, including the silver fork or fashionable novelⁱⁱⁱ, there was an underlying tension between upper and middle classes and the production of wealth and success in a new, modern economy. This was a time when an undercurrent of morality and cultural values were being negotiated simultaneously with the need for a national identity. Moralisers would have it that the masquerade was immoral because of its emphasis on pleasure. But the origins of the masquerade had more to do with class subversion.

By the long Regency, this original intent was stamped out by a greater need to balance nationalism against a changing world. The events themselves leaked this tension through competing motifs of neoclassicism and romanticism in a way that was all together natural for the Regency audience. Elsewhere, too, these undercurrents were having an impact. Brutal sports like pugilism were being reigned in with rules, while blood sports like animal baiting would be slowly stripped out of the towns , boroughs, and hells where they attracted a broad array of customers.

The Prince himself loved a grand party, was devoted to decadence and frequently lampooned as a glutton. And many of the frequent attendees at masquerades too loved a good party, threw themselves into the production at private affairs and tried to imbue their events with novelty. Yet these events, too, adhered to a formula that a critical eye can understand as more of a slave to expectation and tradition than a true celebration of the absurd and the sensual.

In my research, it was this myth of decadence and the masquerade that was the most surprising and something I painstakingly catalogued until the patterns revealed themselves. I do think there was sometimes a fatalistic decadence during the Regency, a desperation spurred by changing a socio-political climate and economy. But I think the tension between this hysterical theatre of luxury with change and attention to social ills presents perhaps the backdrop for the greatest masquerade of all.