When a rag was too raggedy to be a rag, it wasn't worthless in Georgian England.
I'd heard tell of a rag lady who would go around collecting rags in Georgian England. It never occurred to me to ask why she did so.
But then I was researching whether or not the paper my hero uses in Hearts Unknown would have been lily-white in 1763 and discovered at least one of the reasons a person would collect rags.
And it wasn't just rags. Old clothes, sails, even ropes, and various other materials were used to make... Drum roll, please.
Rags were highly prized for paper making.
The sorting rooms in a paper making factory were of utmost important. The very worn cloth made the finest paper (the more raggedy and faded your rag the better), and the rougher the material (hello, ropes!) the coarser and cheaper the paper.
But if the wrong grade ended up in the wrong pile... Ouch! It would cause all kinds of headaches farther down the line. Why? Because the rags had to soak and sit and sit and sit until they were all the same mush-like consistency to make the best paper. But if it sat too long, bad news. If it didn't sit long enough, bad news. The key was the SAME mush-like consistency.
So, if you put an old rope in with worn out dishcloths, those don't discompose at the same rate, and the whole batch would get messed up. We're talking about ruining anywhere from days to weeks of work with no way of 'saving' it. Owie.
These were just two of MANY steps needed to make paper, each step usually taking more than a day and sometimes up to weeks to complete. Making paper was a long-term, very patient business.
However, in answer to my actual question at the start, they didn't have bleach for paper making in 1763, so the whiter you wanted a paper the more labour intensive and time consuming it took. Making white paper very expensive and probably still not lily white unless the rag had been naturally bleached by the sun and continued use with lye soap throughout its life as a rag.
Right around the turn of the 19th Century, paper making drastically changed. They started using bleach, wood pulp, and machinery updates to make paper more similar to what we know it. But Jane Austen didn't have that in her early years. Which means,
It's possible the original manuscript of First Impressions was written on something that was once a rag.
Not a bad end, huh? Quite literally going from rags to riches!
If you'd like to read more about the process, there is an interesting essay on it here: https://paper.lib.uiowa.edu/european.php
If you're interested in knowing more about my hero with a need for paper, check out Hearts Unknown on Amazon.
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