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Monthly Archives: June 2009

Every once in a while (okay, probably every month!) I order a big box of books from the Edward R. Hamilton catalog. They have wonderful remaindered and discounted research-type books, and I’ve gotten some great “finds” from them. In my last shipment, one of the books was Lisa Hilton’s Mistress Peachum’s Pleasure: The Life of Lavinia, Duchess of Bolton about the actress Lavinia Fenton who found great fame on the stage and later was the mistress (and wife) of a duke, and then as a widow lost her fortune on a much younger husband. Quelle scandale! Her big role, the one that made her an overnight sensation on the London theater scene, was as Polly Peachum in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

And today just happens to be John Gay’s birthday! Gay (June 30, 1685–December 4, 1732) was born in Barnstaple and was educated there at the local grammar school. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a silk mercer in London, but quickly grew bored with the business. But he did make a variety of influential literary friends, including Pope and Swift, who encouraged him in his writing endeavors. In 1715 he produced What d’ye call it? (1715), a dramatic satire that left the public so baffled by its meaning there was a Complete Key to what d’ye call it. He went on to produce a poem in 3 volumes, Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London and a comedic play, Three Hours After Marriage (which one critic called “grossly indecent without being amusing”–it was not a success). He made almost 1000 pounds on his Poems on Several Occasions, but lost it all in the South Sea Bubble.

His great success came in 1728 with The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera in 3 acts (ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of the wildly popular Italian opera, but without recitative). It had its premier at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Janaury 28, and ran for an unprecedented 62 consecutive performances. This original production was so popular it enable John Rich, the owner of the theater, to open the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (a popular saying of the day had it that Beggar’s Opera made “Rich gay and Gay rich”).

It satirized the Italian opera of the day, so popular among the upper classes, but instead of grand themes and music it used well-known tunes and characters that were ordinary (not to say criminal!) people. The audience could hum along with the music, even if they had never heard the words before. The story also satirized politics (especially statesmen like Robert Walpole), poverty and injustice, notorious highwaymen of the day, and corruption at all levels of society. It made Lavinia Fenton a big star (poems were written about her and prints of her image sold out, as well as “Polly” fans and firescreens and playing cards).

The plot goes something like this. Peachum is a fence and thief-catcher, and the opera opens with him justifying his actions. He and his wife then discover that their pretty daughter Polly has secretly married the highwayman Macheath. They’re not happy, of course, but conclude that maybe the match makes sense if the new bridegroom can be killed for his money. They leave to carry out this errand (talk about nightmare in-laws!) while Polly hides her husband in a tavern, where he is surrounded by women of dubious virtue (who like to display their perfect drawing-room manners while singing about picking pockets and shoplifting). Too late, Macheath discovers that two of the “ladies” have contracted with Peachum to capture him, and off he goes to Newgate. There the jailor’s daughter, Lucy Lockit, scolds Macheath for agreeing to marry her and then running off. She wants to torture him, but he pacifies her–until Polly arrives and declares he’s her husband. Macheath tells Lucy Polly is just crazy, and Lucy helps him escape. Lucy’s father is none too happy about this, either, and joins forces with Peachum to find Macheath and split up his fortune between them.

Lucy tries to poison Polly, but then they too join forces to save Macheath when he is recaptured. Then four more women show up, claiming to be his wives (his pregnant wives!). Macheath decides he’s ready to be hanged. The narrator (the Beggar) says that in a properly moral tale he would be hanged, but the audience demands a happy ending, so Macheath is reprieved and all are invited to a dance to celebrate his wedding to Polly.

Gay tried to follow up this smash hit with a sequel, Polly, where Macheath has become a pirate and Polly has to escape from white-slavers. But Walpole had had enough of this satire, and leaned on the Lord Chamberlain to have it banned (it was first performed 50 years later). John Gay was buried in Westminster Abbey with an epitaph on his tomb by Pope, along with his own concluding couplet: “Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it.”

Have you ever seen a production of Beggar’s Opera you really enjoyed? Or have any ideas for a book set among characters like this? (We don’t see them too often in romances, of course; our characters would be more likely to be the ones satirized! But I’m working on research for an Elizabethan story set among similar theatrical people, and having lots of fun with it…)

And, on a totally unrelated note, I’ve posted some new author photos for Laurel McKee on my own blog! I can’t decide which I like best. What do you think???

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I just returned from a weekend out of town and I’m still chasing that deadline I mentioned a few weeks ago, so I don’t have time or brain-power to do a clever blog. So it will be “Picture Day” today. I’m not doing any research or checking any facts so I might not be 100% accurate in what I say here.

As a certified Wellington Groupie (Kristine Hughes is the founding member) and in continuing honor of the Waterloo Anniversary, I thought I would simply share some of my Wellington-related photos and thoughts.

When I first fell in raptures about Wellington (or dear Artie, as Kristine calls him), it was at Stratfield Saye, Wellington’s country house. Of all the houses we saw on that 2003 trip to England, Stratfield Saye seemed the most like it was a home. It was a home. The present duke’s son and his family live there, but you could feel the first Duke there in every room. In an outer building there house was the funeral carriage that carried the Duke’s body through London. A recording played of all his honors, as had been read out during his funeral. I realized that this had been a truly great man.


On that trip we also got to go up to the top of the Wellington Arch in London, and of course we toured Apsley House, also known as Number One London. Apsley House felt more like a museum than a house and well it should. It was filled with wonderful art and artifacts.

Also in London we visited Lock and Co, a Hatters shop that has been in Mayfair since 1676. On display there are Wellington’s and Nelson’s hats, instantly recognizable.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Wellington. I’ve just read one biography (and can’t remember which one it was), but I think of him as a man with great integrity, courage and honor. As a boy he didn’t show much promise, but his mother sent him to a military academy in Europe (near Waterloo, I think) and he found his strength. As a military man he understood how to use his resources, he was clever, and he was brave. He rode the battlefield during Waterloo, was everywhere he could be and ignored the danger to himself. He cared about his men. One of my favorite Wellington quotes is: “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

He was not a good husband, although he felt honor-bound to marry his wife, because she thought they were betrothed and had waited for him while he served in India. He had many dalliances throughout their marriage and one has to wonder how his wife felt as this man grew in greatness and increasingly left her behind. His sons could not match his success. Who could? I like this quote from his son after the Duke’s death, “Imagine what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced, and only I walk in the room.”

The Duke was a man who was very sure of himself and his opinions. I suspect he had a big ego, but he also had a sense of humor. In the display at Lock and Co. was a little caricature of Wellington, making fun of the term Wellington boot for the style of boot he favored. At Stratfield Saye there was a room papered with hundreds of caricatures of the Duke, which I thought was akin to a writer papering a bathroom with rejection letters. The boot one was was there, too.

What is your opinion of the Duke of Wellington? Pro and Con. Any favorite quotes or vignettes of his life?

My website has been updated and my contest is still running…I’m just saying.

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Today, welcome back Louise Allen, who has visited the Riskies before with other UK authors. We’re delighted we have her all to ourselves to talk about her latest book, The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst , her latest Harlequin Historical (July, 2009). Louise is giving away one copy of The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst to one lucky commenter. Welcome, Louise!

First of all – thank you for the invitation to Risky Regencies – I’m thrilled to be here!

We’re thrilled to have you. Tell us about your book!
The Disgraceful Mr Ravenhurst (Harlequin July 2009) is set in my favourite region of France – Burgundy. The hero is the black sheep of the Ravenhurst clan, Theophilus, son of a bishop, and in dangerous trouble – as usual. The heroine is Elinor Ravenhurst his bookish spinster cousin touring French cathedrals with her formidable scholarly mother. Theo needs some respectable cover, Elinor needs adventure and between them they end up in the midst of a lethal hunt for a scandalous art treasure, discovering each other and their real feelings in the process.

This is book 4 in your Those Scandalous Ravenhurst series. Tell us about books 1-3
The series features seven cousins in six books. They stand alone, but characters from each occur – and interfere – in the others. The Dangerous Mr Ryder has the mysterious Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst sent to rescue Grand Duchess Eva during Napoleon’s return to France in 1815. The second, The Outrageous Lady Felsham, stars Sebastian’s sister Bel in her search for an exciting lover and includes a polar bear called Horace and a bathing machine at Margate. The third, The Shocking Lord Standon, has a most respectable hero forced by circumstances and the women in his life (including a naked governess in distress, Bel, Eva and Lady Maude, the heroine of the fifth book) to become positively improper. A linked e-book, Disrobed & Dishonored in the Historical Undone series has a number of the Ravenhursts assisting their friend Sarah when she becomes entangled with a very obliging highwayman.

The scheduling of the release of these books was very interesting: July, August and September of 2008, and now July, August and Sept of 2009. Tell us something about the planning for this six book series?
When I was planning I began with Sebastian who had walked, unannounced, into No Place For a Lady in his persona of Jack Ryder, private investigator. I had been expecting an elderly Bow Street Runner, so Jack was a shock and I knew he needed his own book. Looking at the series as a whole I wanted to experiment with different scenarios – a Gothic dungeon, a London drawing room, a pirate ship, a London theatre, the English seaside – and as soon as I began thinking about those settings, Sebastian’s cousins appeared to inhabit their own stories. Before I knew where I was there were six books and a complex family tree.
My editor had originally asked me to think about a brothers and sisters trilogy, so she was startled to be confronted with seven cousins, but she gave me a lot of encouragement and suggested the Undone e-book as well. This was the first series I have written so I didn’t know what to expect with scheduling, but I like the split – it has kept the Ravenhursts in my life for much longer.

What is risky about The Disgraceful Mr. Ravenhurst?
Theo himself thrives on risk and has done since he was expelled from school for gambling. As a bishop’s son he should be in England doing something respectable, not making a very good living on the continent as an antiquities dealer – often on the shady side of the law. Now he has got himself into deep – almost lethal – trouble. It was fun pairing him with a heroine who had never done a risky thing in her life before and watching Elinor rise to the occasion. And Theo is a redhead – I have always been told that readers don’t like redheaded heroes, so that was a risk, but he refused to change colour. Luckily, UK readers who have already met him tell me he’s just fine as he is.

What has been risky about the whole series?
I had never tried a series before, so starting with a six-part one was probably a risk to begin with. Then I wanted to experiment with different types of Regency stories within the series. I thought that might be difficult, but I found it kept the series fresh for me and readers have responded well to that so far.
Juggling the characters, managing their continuing stories and deciding who to bring back, or to introduce, in other books was perhaps the riskiest part of the series as a whole. The Ravenhurst babies were all behaving well and arriving on time – until my editor asked me to review the timescale of The Notorious Mr Hurst. Two weeks, several very overdue babies and much calculation later I managed to sort out the problem!

And tell us about Books 5 and 6: The Notorious Mr. Hurst and The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst.
The Notorious Mr Hurst (Harlequin August 2009) is set in one of London’s smaller theatres. Lady Maude Templeton saw theatre owner Eden Hurst in The Shocking Lord Standon and fell in love at first sight. He has secrets and strong reasons of his own for avoiding an entanglement with a well-bred, wealthy young lady and he doesn’t believe in love – of any kind. But Maude is determined to prove to him that he needs love, and he needs her.
The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst (Harlequin September 2009) is the youngest of the cousins. A Jamaican heiress, Clemence runs from her avaricious guardian uncle straight into the clutches of one of the Caribbean’s nastiest pirates, Red Mathew McTiernan. Her only hope is the ship’s navigator, a renegade naval officer, Nathan Stanier. But just as cabin boy Clem is not what he seems, neither is Mr Stanier. It is a long way home to England, the Ravenhurst clan and true love for Clemence.

Thank you so much for hanging out with the Riskies, Louise. Remember, Louise is giving away a copy to one commenter, chosen at random, so now is your time to ask about her exciting series….or anything else. (Louise is in the UK and may not answer questions while she is sleeping)

Don’t forget to visit Louise’s website! www.louiseallenregency.co.uk And her blog, Historical Romance UK! http://www.historicalromanceuk.blogspot.com/

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What a weird week. Globally, of course, the world is reeling from the unexpected death of pop icon Michael Jackson. I remember having a discussion with someone about who was the most well-known person around the world, and we settled on MJ. How bizarre that someone with that much notoriety, that much at his disposal, seemed to have had such an unhappy life, and definitely had an abrupt ending.

One of my first records ever was the Jackson 5‘s Greatest Hits. I was so young I scrawled my name–only my first name, mind you, since I couldn’t yet spell “McLaughlin”–across the front cover. I listened to that record a whole lot, and bought Jackson 5 45s later on with my allowance.

I remember when Elvis Presley died; I was about to be 13, and I just didn’t get the whole deal, why people were so upset and all (I grew up in a musical household, but we were more likely to be listening to Arthur Crudup, from whom Elvis lifted a lot of his songs).

I get it now, though.

The death of an icon makes us reflect, perhaps selfishly, on our own mortality. Which of my childhood touchstones will be next?

And next month is my son’s tenth birthday, although we are having his birthday party this Saturday (pray for me . . . ). That reminds me just how much has happened, and how he’s not my little boy anymore. Thankfully, he still likes getting hugs from his mom. But who knows when that will change? And who will his childhood touchstones be?

Maybe, to bring it back around to the books we love to read, that is why we love to read romance: It depicts a crystallized moment in time where the main characters are young, interesting and, we presume, destined to have a long, happy life together.

What are you thinking about today?

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