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Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

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Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#91

Post by vinceguidry »

hirundo wrote: post #5

“My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?" "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Elizabeth already knew Mr. Darcy's income and despised him. It was upon learning of his we…

The reason she rejected him was due to the way she perceived his mistreatment of Wickham. She didn't realize just how bad of an egg he was, and how lucky Wickham was to have a connection with Darcy. Upon receiving Darcy's letter, where he bares his entire soul and how he went to considerable expense to make things right for Wickham and her sister anyway, she began to see him in a new light. She was already well down the path to falling for him when they toured his estate the first time.

Obviously that sealed the deal, but Austen wouldn't be hailed as one of the world's greatest novelists if the plot of her seminal work was that easily reduced to money.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#92

Post by benj111 »

dmurray wrote: post #88
benj111 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one New Franc was worth £220 and is 'currently' worth 10p? So the best case is the parent already talking about New Francs, in which case my maths was already right. Or have I made a glaring error ???

I think you're correct that the franc has hugely devalued against the pound in that time. But based on the context from the first paragraph, devchix's post was talking about something different, equating one 1830 franc to £2.2 in today's money, possibly by a "wildly inaccurate" methodology. The historical exchange rate should not be hard to figure out. Both countries were on a gold standard at that time. One 1830 fra…

Were talking about large relative declines either way.

Considering their fortunes have ebbed and flowed at similar times. Both were super powers of their day, both are now large developed economies, I would have expected the outcomes to be much closer.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#93

Post by ubermonkey »

devchix wrote: post #3

Consols schmonsols! The modern prospector such as Mrs. Bennet would want to know how much is that in today's money. Using the Bank of England's trusty inflation calculator and plugging in 1813 (the year Pride and Prejudice was published), Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? Using the annual yield to derive asset, the…

What I've found in looking at historical financial comparisons in the past is that they are inherently unstable / inexact as you get further and further back.

Fifty years ago, even, things fall apart a little. At one point in an early Mad Men episode, some reference is made to whether or not Draper is making $40,000 a year. A basic inflation calculator puts this at about $342K today, but the implication in the show (and in other reading) suggests it likely involved much more purchasing power than $342K implies.

Going back 100 or 200 years, and the economics drift. Prices for goods and for services change relative to each other, so straight-up purchasing power comparisons are hard to establish.

Today, we probably wouldn't parse a $2M inheritance as set-for-life (maybe?), but clearly the implication is that Cosette was, right?

All that is a long way of saying that we can really only know that Darcy was rich, and enjoyed a very healthy income assuming his source assets were protected and working. His friend, less so, but still solidly a member of the correct class.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#94

Post by joshvm »

conjectures wrote: post #64
devchix wrote: post #3

Consols schmonsols! The modern prospector such as Mrs. Bennet would want to know how much is that in today's money. Using the Bank of England's trusty inflation calculator and plugging in 1813 (the year Pride and Prejudice was published), Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? Using the annual yield to derive asset, the…

Inflation figures over 200 years are pretty dodgy. How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. Conversely Darcy would have had far more power than the someone with net worth £16.8-28m would today. He'd probably have had a large say in who the local MP was, the local priest. Probably could tur…

Is this a conflation between wealth and standard of living?

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#95

Post by snowwrestler »

joshvm wrote: post #94
conjectures wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation figures over 200 years are pretty dodgy. How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. Conversely Darcy would have had far more power than the someone with net worth £16.8-28m would today. He'd probably have had a large say in who the local MP was, the local priest. Probably could tur…

Is this a conflation between wealth and standard of living?

I think the point is, you have to conflate them more and more the farther back in time your inflation calculation tries to go.

Some things are pretty much the same today as they were 200 years ago, like land or a person's time. Relative wealth--relative to your surrounding society--allows you to buy those. That was true 200 years ago, and it's true today, although it might cost you a bigger pile of nominal currency (e.g. more British pounds) today than back then.

But no amount of wealth in the early 1800s could have bought you a 6-hour journey from London to New York, NY. Whereas, today it is something that many people can afford, at least occasionally. No amount of money in the 1800s could have bought you high-fidelity recordings of all Beethoven's works that you can carry with you anywhere on your wrist.

So which category better represents inflation since the early 1800s? In terms of things you could buy back then, like land or people's time, you can do a pretty straight calculation. But when you get to brand new categories of things to spend money on, like penicillin or an electric scooter trip, you're essentially "dividing by zero" because these things did not exist at all back then.

You have to invent some sort of way to value a thing in past dollars that could not have actually existed at that point in the past. The farther back you go, the more it just becomes guesswork.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#96

Post by LurkerAtTheGate »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
ghaff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure any sensible person would. If only because you'd be rolling a huge pair of dice with respect to health care, dental care, etc. Your children have decent odds of dying young. Women in childbirth. Infections. No modern dental care etc. Sure, some made it to old age without serious problems. (And people die young today in spite of modern medicine.) But I'll take the bet on today's medicine.

It's not just that. Most everything you did was physical. No indoor plumbing. No ice cream. No fresh vegetables in winter. Itchy clothes. Hardly any books. Travel was difficult, slow, and quite uncomfortable. Lousy shoes. No A/C. Roasting or freezing indoors in winter. Little information about what was happening more than a day's walk away. A rotting mouth. No movies.

In no way arguing your point, just an interesting fact - George Washington adored ice cream: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-washington-...

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#97

Post by conjectures »

joshvm wrote: post #94
conjectures wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation figures over 200 years are pretty dodgy. How much was a dose of penicillin, an iphone or a flight to New York in 1819? There's a very real sense in which very average Westerners now are far wealthier than Darcy. Conversely Darcy would have had far more power than the someone with net worth £16.8-28m would today. He'd probably have had a large say in who the local MP was, the local priest. Probably could tur…

Is this a conflation between wealth and standard of living?

If you think this is a conflation, perhaps you could explain how and why they shouldn't be?

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#98

Post by jaclaz »

billfruit wrote: post #20

I think perhaps french novels have more fascination with money than English novels. The monetary calculation than brings Madam Bovary to ruin is worked out to exact detail by Flaubert. Also Stendhal, in Charterhouse of Parma, almost all characters are expressed in terms of so many francs and sous per year. Amongst the English, I think Trollope did have a particular engagement with wealth and money matters in his nove…

>I think perhaps french novels have more fascination with money than English novels.

Personally I was always fascinated by the Count of Monte Cristo (not much later than Austen's work, published in 1844), when he arrives in Paris and presents to Mr. Danglars an unlimited letter of credit by the bankers French & Thomson:

>"Why," said Danglers, "in the letter -- I believe I have it about me" -- here he felt in his breast-pocket -- "yes, here it is. Well, this letter gives the Count of Monte Cristo unlimited credit on our house."

"Well, baron, what is there difficult to understand about that?"

"Merely the term unlimited -- nothing else, certainly."

"Is not that word known in France? The people who wrote are Anglo-Germans, you know."

and, later:

>"Well, sir," resumed Danglars, after a brief silence, "I will endeavor to make myself understood, by requesting you to inform me for what sum you propose to draw upon me?"

"Why, truly," replied Monte Cristo, determined not to lose an inch of the ground he had gained, "my reason for desiring an `unlimited' credit was precisely because I did not know how much money I might need."

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#99

Post by neaden »

ubermonkey wrote: post #93
devchix wrote: post #3

Consols schmonsols! The modern prospector such as Mrs. Bennet would want to know how much is that in today's money. Using the Bank of England's trusty inflation calculator and plugging in 1813 (the year Pride and Prejudice was published), Darcy's worth £681K a year and his friend half that. In the Valley or London, what's that, a director level at a FAANG, and a tech lead? Using the annual yield to derive asset, the…

What I've found in looking at historical financial comparisons in the past is that they are inherently unstable / inexact as you get further and further back. Fifty years ago, even, things fall apart a little. At one point in an early Mad Men episode, some reference is made to whether or not Draper is making $40,000 a year. A basic inflation calculator puts this at about $342K today, but the implication in the show (…

Agatha Christie once said that when embarking on her writing career she never thought she would be wealthy enough to afford a car, or too poor to afford servants. Things change quite fast.

And I would say that a $2M inheritance is set for life, withdrawing 4% of that should leave you at a steady income of $80,000 a year for doing nothing.

Re: Mr. Darcy’s Ten Thousand a Year

#100

Post by neaden »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #54
kirrent wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but Elizabeth is still being sarcastic here, as is very much in her character, despite Jane's request to the contrary.

It's not simple sarcasm. There's plenty of truth in it, so there's an element of knowing self-deprecation - not just on Elizabeth's part, but also Austen's, because the sentiment that would have been recognised by many of her readers. Austen herself was in the same position as Elizabeth, with a tiny inheritance that provided no financial security. So P&P is as much a fantasy about finding financial safety as it is ab…

It's also because she sees how Darcy's servants and tenants view him. He is a popular man and treats the people who depend on him well which speaks positively to his character.
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