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Monthly Archives: August 2015

We’ve been having a truly awful heatwave here in Northern California. My house is overrun with ants and I’ve been hearing half the people I know complain about sudden outbreaks of fleas (no outbreak here *knock on wood*), but it got me thinking: what did people do when there was no Advantage, no Capstar, to turn to? My books are full of dogs, and my work in progress has a housekeeper squaring off with a new wife and a puppy with fleas is a perfect fight!

Well, there is actually advice on that in multiple period sources! Huzzah!!! Research! Here’s a bit of advice from a little period magazine I own (from 1819) The Complete Dog-Fancier’s Companion, Describing the Nature, Habits, Properties, etc. of Sporting, Fancy, and Other Dogs; with Directions of choosing the genuine breed, Instructions for rearing, manner of training for water and the field, Disorders they are generally subject to, Methods of cure etc. etc. (Interspersed with many curious and entertaining anecdotes of the useful and faithful animals).

Dog advice 2

 

 

Not sure I want to rub my dog in goose-grease or olive oil, but I imagine it would do the trick of suffocating the fleas. And the cumin and hellebore might work, too. I know the organic spray I have is made of mint and cloves, which a Georgian person would also be able to easily obtain (BTW, you can download a scan of this book for your personal collection HERE).

Yet more advice from Canine Pathology, 1817.

And from A Treatise on Greyhounds (1816):

From A New Present for a Servant Maid (1771):

From The Housewifes Companion (1674)

I’m hoping a few domestic battles will be fun to write and I’m having a good time looking into just what people might have done to combat the “nimble gentry” in the Georgian era.

 

Duke of Wellington

Duke of Wellington

For a while now, dukes have been running rampant through the Regency fiction genres, especially in Historicals, but even in Trads. Do you love this? Hate this? Don’t care? The trend seems as strong as ever. The publishers, and apparently the readers, love them. And hey, we’re writing stories that are fantasies based on a romantic view of our time period, so why not? It’s not as if all of these fictional dukes exist in the same version of Regency England –each author’s Regency World is unique to that author (except perhaps in a connected set or special project). Right? But did you ever wonder how many dukes there really were in Great Britain during the Regency?

Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton and 5th Duke of Brandon

Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton & 5th Duke of Brandon

You might say dukes are the equivalent historical heart-throbs to the super-billionaires that are the go-to heroes in current contemporary romance. As The Daily Mail has explained it: “Dukes are just one rung down from royalty in the social pecking order and enjoy a special status way above the rank and file of the aristocracy. As peerages go, it’s the jackpot.”

Who wouldn’t want their hero to be that special? Except the way I see it, this status cuts both ways. The very rarified “special-ness” of such high rank begins to suffer when book after book after book has young, handsome, wealthy dukes just ripe for marriage. It just rubs against my personal vision of what I think the Regency was like, or makes the rank of duke seem a little common. Dukes were rare, and most often old…weren’t they? And I’m not even touching the question of the way dukes fit into the political structure, but you can note below how many of the dukedoms are named for the counties of Britain….

Charles+Lennox,+3rd+Duke+of+Richmond+(1758),+Sir+Joshia+Reynolds.

Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond

I’ve nothing against my fellow authors whose heroes are dukes, or the readers who love them. I get it. But I can’t do it. Every time I consider creating a hero who is so highly ranked –well, I feel like I stubbed my toe. The closest I’ve come to it was dealing with a duke’s family in An Unlikely Hero, and that story’s hero was a viscount, a “lowly” friend of the duke’s son. Am I losing readers?

I don’t seem to have the same problem with creating heroes in the lower peerage ranks. There were so many more of them! Earls, for instance. I am fond of them. They could be wealthier than some dukes were! But I have this idea that there were a lot more earls floating around in the real Regency England, so it seems less of a violation to add in a few fictional ones. And barons –they date very far back in time, and there were lots of them, too. Has the demand for dukes devalued the other four peerage ranks (marquess, earl, viscount, and baron) in our fiction?

I decided to put my prejudice to the test and check the numbers. (I’m not including Royal Princes’ dukedoms). After all the dukedoms that have been created, recreated, forfeited, merged (through marriage or elevation to higher rank), or simply gone extinct (no heirs), today there are only 24 still extant. But how many in our favorite time period?

63 English (non-royal) dukedoms starting as early as 1351 went extinct, were forfeited to the crown, or merged prior to 1707. Eleven (including two forfeited and restored several times) were extant at least through the Regency:

1 Norfolk, 1483 (forfeited three times up to 1660)

Edward Seymour duke of somerset

Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset

2 Somerset, 1547 (forfeited 1552-1660)

Charles_Lennox,_1st_Duke_of_Richmond_and_Lennox_by_Sir_Godfrey_Kneller,_Bt

Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond

3 Richmond, 1675

4 Grafton, 1675

5 Beaufort, 1682

6 St Albans, 1684

7 Leeds, 1694 (extinct in 1964)

8 Bedford, 1694

9 Devonshire, 1694

John_Churchill_Duke of Marlborough__van_der_Werff

Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill’s ancestor

10 Marlborough, 1702

11 Rutland, 1703

Between 1707-1801, about ten more were created and went extinct, merged, or were forfeit. Eight dukedoms of Great Britain created during these years were still extant into the Regency:

12 Brandon, 1711

13 Ancaster & Kesteven, 1715 (extinct-1809)

14 Portland, 1716 (extinct 1990)

15 Manchester, 1719

16 Dorset, 1720

17 Bridgewater, 1720 (extinct 1803)

18 Newcastle-under-Lynne, 1756 (extinct 1988)

19 Northumberland, 1766

Created between 1801-1822, only two:

20 Wellington, 1814

21 Buckingham and Chandos, 1822 (extinct 1889)

22 Duke of Leinster, 1691, was the only Irish dukedom extant during the Regency

It appears there were nine Scottish Dukes during the Regency, titles dating from 1707 or earlier. (18 other Scottish dukedoms went extinct, were forfeited to the crown, or merged between 1351-1707 ) The nine:

1) Hamilton 1643 (and later Brandon, 1711)

2) Buccleough, 1663 (and Queensbury, 1810)

George_Douglas_Campbell,_8th_Duke_of_Argyll_by_George_Frederic_Watts

G. D. Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll

3) Lennox 1665

4) Gordon

5) Queensbury, 1684

6) Arguyll, 1701

7) Atholl, 1703

8) Montrose, 1707

9) Roxburghe, 1707

By my count, that’s 31 dukes during the Regency, in all of England, Scotland, and Ireland. If I had time, I would now look them all up to find out how old each one was in, say, 1816!!

For comparison, I give you:

1) number of earldoms (English, Scottish, Irish, G.B or U.K.), established before or during the Regency (1398-1822) still extant today: 142. (Because the sheer number of earldoms has long surpassed the number of territorial counties, the names of many earldoms are associated with smaller units (estates, villages, families, etc.).

2) number of baronies (English, Scottish, Irish, G.B or U.K.), established before or during the Regency (1264-1822) still extant today: 124 (and 317 more were created since 1822!)

I am sure there were more of both these peerages during the Regency that disappeared later –sorry I don’t have time to analyze these long lists! You get my point. Slipping in a bunch of fictional earls or barons doesn’t rattle my universe of imagined history nearly as much as all those dukes!

James-Graham-1st-Marquess-of-Montrose-by-William-Dobson

1st Marquess of Montrose

Viscounts and marquesses, the other two peerage titles, were less common, at least as independent titles. Copied from the French, they came into use later, and tended to become subsidiary titles as the holders were promoted. Much more commonly found as the courtesy titles used by heirs-apparent. Today there are only 25 marquesses who do not hold higher titles, and 37 such viscounts. I learned that stand-alone viscountcies were more common in Ireland than the other parts of the UK –24 of those 37 viscounts are Irish titles. Things I’ll keep in mind for future stories!!

I came across two tidbits that I can’t resist sharing. One is this: The Daily Mail reported in 2009 that Tatler Magazine invited the 24 then-current non-royal dukes to lunch. Some were too frail to attend, and some live abroad, but ten of them came. Those ten represented the largest gathering of dukes since Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953! Their ages ranged from 41 to 94. For a photo of them, details and the interesting story, see “Ten Dukes a-Dining”.

And this last bit is at least for Amanda, and also shows that it’s not always good to be a duke:

“When Elizabeth I came to power the only [remaining] living duke was Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth did not create any dukes, and she beheaded Thomas Howard at the age of 36 for plotting to wed Mary, Queen of Scots and overthrow her. By 1572, this class of peerage was extinct – there were no Dukes in the last 30 years of her reign.” (from Wikipedia) No wonder Shakespeare could so liberally sprinkle both historical and fictional dukes throughout his plays without worrying about direct repercussions! (besides putting them in Italy, of course) No one in England held that rank for most of his lifetime –from the time he was eight until seven years after his death in 1616. The later extant Dukedoms in the Peerage of England were created (or restored, in two cases) in the Stuart period and after.

How do you feel about dukes? In our Regency fantasies, does it matter whether the titles of our characters reflect the nature of the peerage at the time? I’d love to hear what you think!

LadyVengeance-330I apologize for the delay in announcing the winner of Lady Vengeance, the giveaway book by Sarah Eagle offered in her two-part post about the Waterloo Anniversary at the end of last month. The delay is entirely my fault, not hers –August has been crazy-busy!! I am happy to announce that the winner of her book, chosen at random, is faithful reader bn100. I will be emailing her to arrange the book delivery. Thank you to everyone who commented on Sally’s posts!

 

One of my favorite parts of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Annual Conference is that the Beau Monde chapter of RWA holds their annual conference the Wednesday before. I try always to attend. It is a great chance to see old friends and to hear great presentations on my favorite topics–anything about the Regency era!

IMG_0082This years conference keynote speaker was Miranda Neville, who honored her recently deceased father in her speech. Her father nurtured Miranda’s interest in history and took her and her sister to museums throughout Europe as a result. If that wasn’t enough to envy, she also had an idyllic childhood on a farm in Wiltshire and went on to work for Sotheby’s, writing catalogues of rare books and original letters and manuscripts. This meant she was paid to read the personal correspondence of historical figures, including those of “our” time period. Needless to say, Miranda likes to get the history correct in her books!

Our Risky Janet Mullany presented a workshop on servants, but I won’t say much about that, because she may be telling you herself. She told us about Black servants who were in England for many years. She mentioned one of the duties of footmen was to deliver messages for the lords and ladies for whom they worked. I thought it a clever fact to use in a future story that the footmen might take hours to deliver such messages, even though the distances might be nor more that a mile away.

Another Risky who presented a workshop was Isobel Carr, who spoke about the fabrics of the time period, about the different weaves of fabrics and the different materials from which they were made. Isobel has so much expertise to share on this topic, it is much too extensive for me to repeat. One interesting fact, though. We all believed that Scottish clans each had their own tartans. I imagined the clans rushing into battle at Culloden each wearing their clan’s plaids. It turns out that, in the late 18th century, a man named William Wilsons published a pattern book in which he assigned clan names to different tartans. The clans themselves had nothing to do with it.

Edmund_Blair_Leighton_-_Singing_to_the_reverendRisky friend Louisa Cornell talked about The Musical Education of a Regency Young Lady. I’ve heard Louisa speak on this topic before and I was so happy to hear Louisa, formerly a professional opera singer, sing some of the examples. She showed us what (and how) a sweet young might sing at a recital, what a talented young lady might sing, and what selections would be scandalous for a young lady to sing. Turns out, singing scandalous songs was acceptable in society.

Jackie Horne spoke about The Material Culture of Childhood and showed how the different cultural views on childhood were reflected in their toys, furniture, and clothing. Before 1750, children were rushed to adulthood, so their furniture, clothing, etc. reflected that. 1750 to 1830 was the era of the Natural Child, the belief that childhood was a special time requiring more freedom of movement than children had experienced previously. One interesting fact Jackie told us. Baby carriages were not invented until 1830, so don’t have your Regency characters pushing one!

Cheryl Bolen shared tons of information on the interiors of Regency houses, both in Town and in the country. She showed us slide after slide of wonderful Regency interiors, including some beautiful Adams rooms. You can see these images on her Pinterest Boards. An interesting fact–her floorplan of a typical Regency town house showed that the master’s bedroom was on the ground floor behind the dining room.

georgette-heyer-biographyThe Beau Monde was honored to have Jennifer Kloester, author of the recent acclaimed biography of Georgette Heyer. Ms. Kloester gave us a lovely picture of Heyer, including many of the insider tidbits she’d learned doing her research. She showed us a photograph of Heyer in her 20s by a then famous photographer. She looked like a 13 year old. Another photo the next year was more like the one on this book cover.

I missed the last workshop, because I needed to get ready for RWA’s huge Literacy Book Signing, but I heard it was wonderful, too. It was about Regency dance and was intriguingly titled Rethinking the Regency Ballroom with special guest Susan de Guardiola.

Miss Guardiola also led us in dance later at the evening soiree, where I joined other Beau Monde members, many in period costume, dancing the dances of the Regency. My dance partner was Joanne Grant, Senior Executive Editor at Harlequin UK. She and I have danced at previous soirees and it was a delight to have her attend this year’s and dance with me again!

It was a wonderful Beau Monde conference. Special thanks to Janna MacGregor, the coordinator of the conference. She did a marvelous job! And has become a great friend of mine, as well!

What topics would you like to hear presented at a Beau Monde conference? I’ll pass on your ideas!

I’m coming down to the line on finishing my novella for the upcoming anthology Christmas in Duke Street. Despite being madly writing, I have great sites I came across recently.

The Bodleian Library Goes Digital

When I was in grad school and researching a Regency era author named Eleanor Sleath, I was also frequently side-tracked into other fascinating areas of research that was quite handy for writing Regency Historical Romance. One of the most tantalizing things I came across was the Ephemera collection at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. At the time, a handful of images had been made available. It happened that their server was misconfigured and I was able to get to a directory listing of the ephemera collection and could see that they had playbills, and I was searching for performances of a certain play. I wanted to look at those playbills so badly …. A trip to the UK was out of the question. Well, the Bodleian has put this collection on line and searchable along with other collections: Digital Bodleian.

Here’s some playbills in the Ephemera collection: Playbills (None are the play I was looking for, alas.)

Here’s a ticket for a ball given by the Lord Mayor: ticket

Then there’s this letter to the Editor:

(Hopefully that lands you at the enlarged image. If not, click on the magnifying glass.)

To the Printer of the DIARY.
SIR,
My attention being roused by the claims of different countries to the Artist who produced the Exhibition of Edinburgh in the Haymarket, I went to see a work, which, from the contention, promises to have so much merit. I expected to have seen a model like that of Rome, or London; for transparent painting, such as I’ve seen before; but was agreeably surprised to see, I will venture to say, the greatest curiosity ever exhibited in painting, without any deception but that of the pencil, laying nature fairly open to my view, in a manner entirely new.
I ever wish to see the arts flourish; I hope this extraordinary effort of ingenuity will meet its reward: to doubt it would be an insult to publick taste.
Yours, &c.

LIBERALITY.

I had to (digitally) go to a library in Australia to find out what this letter was about. Here’s the link. I’m sorry, it’s a pdf and I sure hope the link works.

The letter first refers to an exhibition in the Haymarket of a panorama of Edinburgh by Irish painter Robert Barker. (Thus, the artist referred to is Robert Barker) This was something of a sensation. No one (according to these sources) had ever painted a panorama before, nor lit and placed it as Barker did. The panorama was 7.5 meters long and was exhibited in London in March of 1789. It stayed on view until 1790. Barker then prepared a panorama of London.

Indeed, this source claims that Barker’s friends coined the word “panorama” to describe this ability to walk around a painting as if one were actually at that location in the world. From this, Barker, and after his patent expired, other artists, produced panoramas of other cities and countries. This letter seems to be referring to a subsequent exhibition of other countries. Barker, having succeeded wildly, built an exhibition hall behind his home at 28 Castle Street Leiscester Square. A larger structure was built at another location, also in Leiscester Square by 1793. The Royal family visited and was much impressed. Panoramas were a popular entertainment through the 1850s.

Ships! The HMS Victory

The Independent has a fascinating article about why the HMS Victory sank. It sure wasn’t what I thought. This article is a great overview of the ship and its history, with a dose of climate, bureaucracy, and bad design thrown in.

The tragedy was not caused by dangerous rocks and the failure of the Alderney lighthouse keeper to keep the fire burning as believed at the time. The reasons for the Victory’s loss were almost certainly poor ship design, top-heavy weight, instability caused by heavy guns and possibly rotting timbers. victory1744.org

For more about this ship, there’s a website dedicated to it: victory1744.org. The photos of the wreck in-situ are stunning.

While I was putting together this post, one of my searches led to a site about pens, which I clicked on because pens! I’m addicted to fountain pens. When I was done, I went to the pen site and discovered that this company sells pens made with wood from the hull of the HMS Victory. Here’s the page about that. And here are the HMS Victory pens they sell.

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