Are you a Regency Buck or Belle?

These days it can be so hard to tell whether you're the hero of a shoddily researched romance novel or actually living in 1813.  Luckily, as a historian, I am well qualified to help you establish your exact circumstance.  Are you ready to take the quiz? Good.

For Gentlemen:
A. You are wearing a coat tailored by Weston, skin-tight inexpressibles and Hessians polished to a mirror-like shine by your valet, with whom you fought in the Peninsula, Rawlins.

Assessment: Tough call, but the fact that in your inner monologue you referred to trousers or breeches as "inexpressibles" suggests you are a figment of Georgette Heyer's imagination.

"I'm searching for just the right word to describe this. Imagine something moving with an aura of controlled power and radiating confidence.  It ripples like a stallion's heaving flank after a bruising ride.  Okay now think of an article of clothing that would cover something like that.  No, not my sleeves.  Nor my cravat, which I have tied in the Mathematical Waterfall, though I appreciate that you've noticed my puissant neck.  Golly this is hard.  Let's just call them 'inexpressibles.'"

B. Ask an honest friend from the 21st century to assess your body odor and rank it accordingly:
1. You smell like a wrestling camp locker room
2. You smell like an outhouse that has been dumped with Axe body spray
3. You smell of brandy, leather, and something inexpressibly male.
4. Your odor is unique to you, yet intoxicating
5. You smell of soap and a hint of, what is it, lemon? Cinnamon? I don't know but I want to kiss it.

Assessment: 1-2  Definitely 1813.   3 -- difficult to say.  Press you friend for details.  If the inexpressible odor turns out to be related to bodily fluids, you're probably really in the regency.  If you're just ineffably and olfactorily desirable human you're likely in a novel. 4-5 You're a work of fiction, mate.

"Oh my Lord, I'm shrinking from you for reasons of maidenly modesty, and definitely not because you smell like an open sewer. Etiquette forbids me to inhale unless we are separated by ten feet, what would Mama say?!"

C. In the past 24 hours have you: Made a magnificent leg, made a bet about a gently born lady's prospects on the Marriage Mart and recorded it in the betting book at White's or proposed marriage to a woman you scarcely know in order to secure an inheritance?
Assessment: Novel.

"It shall be strictly a marriage of convenience, at least until we are snowed in at my hunting lodge and the firelight plays tricks with my resolve!"
"Fine.  But my dead dog rug comes with me."

D.  Are you grotesquely disfigured from your presence at the Battle of Talavera?
Assessment: Really in 1813.  You might score a bit role as the impetus for an affecting scene in a novel wherein the heroine demonstrates her awareness of current events and sensibility, but you're definitely not the hero.

E. How many teeth do you have, and are they straight and gleamingly white?
Assessment: If the answer is not "all of them, and they are incandescent" you are in 1813.  No gap toothed swains need apply.

F.  You find yourself accumulating demonic nicknames.  Perhaps it is your saturnine good looks, or how you have the devil's luck at cards, but many call you "Lucifer" Beresford, the Dark Duke.
Assessment: In a novel, unless you are in fact the eminence of evil and your legal name is B. Elzebub.  In which case you might be Ol' Scratch in 1813.

For Misses Scarcely Out of the School Room

A.  Your honesty and frank innocence is refreshingly entrancing and a hardened rake has forsaken his gaming hells, claiming to find you fascinating and swearing he could never be bored by you, despite evidence that you are overwhelmingly bland.
Assessment:  Novel.

B. You embark upon the Marriage Mart determined that your head will rule your heart and you will make a marriage that will please papa.  You accomplish this.
Assessment: 1813.

C. A gentleman who reads aloud well has found favor with both you and your family, who are all greatly diverted by the distraction from the inexpressible boredom of living in the countryside in 1813.
Assessment: You're really in the Regency.  Novel heroines spend their evenings at Vauxhall or being kidnapped by dastardly roués who want to ruin their reputations in return for a handsome dowry and humiliating the once proud Lord Wrexham.

"Great.  He's reading Fordyce's sermons from the beginning.  Mama is charmed and says I must accept. Why cannot I have your happiness and freedom?"
"Take my advice, Lucy dearest.  Always wear pink satin, and never leave home without a dead dog."

 D.  When you go to a play, your gentleman escort is completely absorbed in watching your innocent wonder and emotional attachment to the spectacle, even as the rest of jaded London preens and spies upon one another.  You do not notice him staring fixedly, so wrapt is your gaze.  You are able to hear every note despite the lack of amplification and the raucousness of the audience.
Assessment: Novel.  Expect him to offer you a monogrammed handkerchief as a single crystalline tear slides down your porcelain cheek when the last note dies.

E.  You know adult women who affect baby talk or a lisp in order to entrance a man. And it seemingly works.
Assessment: Novel.  Slap that woman next time you see her.

"Ow you wead so weww! Widdow me could never manage!"
Can I get any further away from them while still keeping in contact with my dead dog? Edge carefully, don't wrinkle your only dress, self.

F.  The fact that England has been at war for your entirely life time has been personally devastating.  You have lost loved ones in the conflict.  Your dislike of Bonaparte is based on personal tragedy, rather than a pettish desire for a trip to Paris.
Assessment: 1813.  Hang in there, Lucinda.  Just a couple more years.

"Let me sing you a warm tune I learned in the Peninsula, which sounds a little like penis if you're drunk enough!"
"Oh la sir! You put me in the blush!"
Dog rug wishes he could be left at home for once.

G. Your ability to dance is dependent entirely on having a partner who commands you to maintain eye contact.  He glides expertly, with the grace of leonine panther, around Alamacks as the ton gazes on with disapproving jealousy, you suddenly discover that you move with the tender grace of a willow or a snowdrop or something that doesn't move under its own power.

Assessment: Novel written by high schoolers who were bored in class.

H. You are forced to feign interest in poorly executed music.

Assessment: You could be anywhere.

"I sat down first when the music stopped! Fair is fair, I get the dog rug as a prize!"

"Your mama told me you had an ear for music"
"She didn't mean you should attempt to lick it"
"Fido is asleep, he will not wake your duenna!"
"I wish I were as dead as Fido."
"What my dearest?"
"Nothing." 

La, sir! You caught me idly strumming my lyre and flattening my dog pelt. I know how men love a lady who is accomplished AND a skilled manager of the home!

Special credit goes to painter Vittorio Reggianini and to his dead dog, neither gone nor forgotten. RIP Fido.