This is exactly the kind of comment that I was fishing for! You are probably aware that NA was written about 1798, and rewritten at least once, if not several times, before it was finally published, by Henry's efforts, in 1818. It is a matter of much speculation as to how much of the final titivating was Henry's, and how much of the original 1798 writing was still there. So it is that details like the pinning up of gowns becomes significant. Your post seems to suggest that this would be an 'early version', as it stands.

Trains came in two styles: one was the standard skirt that was simply extended in length in the back, the other was a separate garment piece which was attached to the gown at the shoulders in back.

Yes, it had occured to me that the train just might be from the shoulder, rather more like a formal coronation gown than an extra-long skirt.

] As for pins in sleeves, this was a fairly common way of making a puff at the shoulder - like bustling up a train, you would make a pouffy fold about midway between elbow and shoulder and pin it in place, to draw up the sleeve into a puff.

Yes, that makes sense to me...a great many of those muslin-y dresses in portraits (and we do know that Mrs Allen's dress was muslin, don't we! LOL!) have very informally-puffed up sleeves...is that a 1790's thing too, do you think?

] I really don't understand how all these women managed(snip)

Yet 'pin money', i.e. a woman's allowance suggests that that is really what they did. Have you any idea how ornate such pins would have been, Louisa? Are we talking literally straight pins, or is this something more like a brooch?

And, incidentally, how much would a paper of pins cost, in those days?