If you consult "Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management" you can learn all kinds of things. A lower level maid would be paid 1 shilling 3 pence a week, plus food, housing, beer, and clothes. She would work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with an afternoon off each fortnight, or two weeks. A ladies maid could make 30£ a year and up, or $150. One should also not pay more than 1/12 one's income for housing. It's not clear if utilities (coal, etc) and repairs are included. Housing seems less expensive, while food, clothes, and manufactured goods were very expensive.
Mr Darcy's income was 10,000£ a year, or probably over $1,000,000 a year, while you could live, as a gentleman, on around $1000. You can get by on the income of £1000, £50 a year, but not as a gentleman. It would be a nice supplement to that £1000 a year.
Btw, £1 was equal to 5$ back then.
What makes it tricky is that costs have risen very unevenly, and what constitutes a middle class life is different. Another point I ran across: a laborer made about the same amount as the allowance of a public school student. You can understand why lower class people were so put vulnerable -- they would do just about anything for a tip of a shilling.
Those dollar comparisons are not very useful. Instead of 477 horses, or whatever, it would be better to think about the cost of trained carriage horses, their feed and meds, the coachman's and groom's wages, housing, and other expenses, plus the carriage house and stable, and miscellaneous expenses. All that, versus an expensive car or two.
