getting out of bed at some stage in the day! ;-)

Of course, I'd forgotten that Mrs D brings nothing to the marriage. This makes her much luckier than Lady B.

I'm dipping into Lawrence James' The Middle Class: a History (2006), which puts some of this thread into the context of what was driving gentlefolk around this time. It's no secret that it was status, even more than money, which gives another slant to Barbara's post about Mrs D's relatives possibly having status, even if they couldn't afford a dowry. For them, the real disaster wouldn't have been to go bankrupt but to suffer the social decline that would result. Conversely, to be rich as the result of trade was just not the done thing, as any reader of P&P and Emma knows only too well!