I started watching this once before and had to turn it off because I found her mouth so obnoxious. Maybe that's the way the lower class British spoke back then?
But, then the men in the movie going on about how pretty and enchanting she is...I certainly don't see it.
I've made it further this time. Since apparently it's based on a true story, that makes it more interesting.
There are countless people in the UK who have the same and similar speech patterns today.
The standard of beauty was different in that time period. Women couldn't wear makeup...if they did, they were almost always actresses or streetwalkers and neither was considered particularly desirable by the upper classes.
Look at some of the paintings by the European masters...you'll see plenty of similarities.
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One reason so many of the men found her so exciting and enchanting was that she was a breath of fresh air. She was a chef when there were no female chefs and owned and ran a very expensive, high class hotel (in her own right) when women didn't do that either. That novelty alone would make the aristocratic set notice her.
Add to that the fact that the other working class women they encountered were women of "easy virtue" or who worked for them. As you can see from Charlie's interactions in the first episode, this class of man was used to taking their pleasure "below stairs" but demanded that men treated her with respect and as an equal.
She was nothing like the wives, sisters, and mothers of the society men who frequented her hotel. They had no frame of reference for someone like Louisa, she was an iconoclast, and that is what made her so alluring to them.
I think she was a rarity for her time - young, ambitious, talented, driven and bossy. How else would she have run a business in 1900 man’s world if she didn’t scare the socks out of everyone?
On her attraction to men, it might be a cultural thing. British men from noble families tend to go for bossy women or stern women who are good at horse riding and hunting. Think of Prince Charles and Camilla. Might be something to do with being raised by nannies and boarding school masters.
As far as her mouth, that is the London working class attitude. Cockneys/East Enders were dockworkers and street merchants and never take nonsense from anyone. I was in a cafeteria line in London, when right in front me and tens of other customers the manager yelled at her employee to “stop standing ‘round like a bleeding lump, get to work!” All big cities have their own version of rude, street wise types.. New York cabbies, Parisian waitors