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Author Archives: Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

About Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Writer (as Amanda McCabe, Laurel McKee, Amanda Carmack), history geek, yoga enthusiast, pet owner!

Bastille1Or rather, happy day before Bastille Day, since July 14 is the time to celebrate the day in 1789 when an angry mob stormed the prison and released scads of prisoners–well, 7 anyway. It was officially declared a national holiday on July 6, 1880. It’s a good excuse to spend your weekend drinking champagne, eating wonderfully unhygenic cheese, wearing berets, and listening to “La vie en rose” over and over (it’s MY excuse, anyway, though really every day is a good day for champagne and Piaf!)

To help you get your celebration in order, here are a few links to give you some party pointers and a few quotes to inspire you.

Fun party drinks (they mostly appear to be sticky-sweet concoctions made from things like cherry brandy, but I think the Marie Antoinette sounds sort of yummy…)

Fun party menus (though with drinks like the Montmartre, who needs food???)

Official stuff from the French Embassy

And more on how to celebrate

“France has more need of me than I have need of France” –Napoleon

“It’s true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it’s a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race.” –Anita Loos

“In America, only the successful writer is important; in France all writers are important; in England no writer is important; and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is” —
Geoffrey Cottrell

“I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.” –Charles de Gaulle

“Boy, those French. They have a different word for everything.” –Steve Martin

“Paris is always a good idea.” –Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina

“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.” –Victor Hugo

“Frenchmen are like gunpowder, each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed!” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It feels like it’s been forever since I was at the Riskies!  The last several weeks have been spent moving to a new city (and looking for weird stuff in random boxes, because I packed teapots and mugs in different places, and lost the toothpaste…yet I could easily find 20 pairs of shoes!), getting the dog and cat children settled, and most important–getting a library card!  It’s nice to settle back into a writing routine again (I’m working on my 6th Elizabethan Mystery, Murder at Fontainebleau), and take a look at an interesting woman in history for June…

HM1Today we are looking at one of the fascinating women of Regency(ish) history, Harriet Martineau, a Whig writer and social theorist who was called “the first woman sociologist.” She was born June 12, in 1802 in Norwich, England, the 6th of 8 children of a manufacturer. Her family was descended from Huguenots (hence the last name) and of liberal Whig, Unitarian views. She grew up educated and in an intellectual environment, but her health was not good and she became quite deaf at a very young age, which forced her to use an ear trumpet. At 16 she was sent away from home to visit her aunt, who kept a school in Bristol, in hopes that a change of scene would help her health. From 1819 to 1830 she returned to reside in Bristol, and in 1821 began writing anonymously for the Unitarian periodical Monthly Repository, with her first book, Devotional Exercises and Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns coming out in 1823 (she would eventually write more than 50 volumes, on a wide variety of subjects).

In 1826 her father died (soon after the deaths of her eldest brother and her suitor), leaving her and her mother and sisters poverty-stricken. Since her deafness kept her from teaching, Harriet took up serious writing. She went on writing for the Repository as well as short stories (later collected in the volume Traditions of Palestine), won 3 essay prizes from the Unitarian Association in only one year, and did needlework to supplement her writing income. In 1831 she published the first volume ofIllustrations of Political Economy, which was a huge success, with demand increasing for each following volume. In 1832 she moved to London and moved in circles that inluded such people as John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the Brownings, and Thomas Carlyle. She was also friends with Florence Nightingale and Charlotte Bronte. She finished her political economy series, another series titled Illustrations of Taxation, and stories in support of the Whig Poor Law reforms.

In May 1834, Charles Darwin on his Pacific voyage received a letter from his sisters saying that Martineau was “a great Lion in London” and sending him her Poor Laws and Paupers Illustratedin pamphlet size. They also said their brother “Erasmus knows her & is a very great admirer.” When Darwin returned home in 1836 he stayed with his brother in London and found that Erasmus spent a lot of time “driving out Miss Martineau.” The Darwins and Harriet had in common their Unitarian background and liberal Whig politics, but their father thought perhaps her views were a bit TOO liberal for a daughter-in-law and the pair never married. But Charles called on her and stated “she was very agreeable, and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects” though he was also “astonished to find how ugly she is” and “she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and abilities”. Erasmus told his brother “one ought not to look at her as a woman.”

In 1834 she went on a long trip to the United States, where she became an adherent f the Abolitionists and later published Theory and Practice of Society in America and Retrospect of Western Travel, as well as an article called “The Martyr Age of the United States” in theWestminster Review. Her outspoken opinions on the evils of slavery caused a great deal of offense, but she did not care. She followed up this work with a novel, Deerbrook, a story about a surgeon hero and middle-class life.

On a trip to Europe in 1839 she fell ill, and went to stay with her sister and brother-in-law, the well-known doctor Thomas Greenhow, in Newcastle on Tyne to try and alleviate her symptoms (believed to be caused by an ovarian cyst). She then moved to Tynemouth, where she stayed for nearly 5 years in the clean sea air and wrote 3 books, including a novel about the Haitian rebel L’Ouverture and Life in the Sick Room. She loved her new telescope, which allowed her to take in the life of the town and the beach from her window (it’s thought the busybody Mrs. Jellyby in Dickens’s Bleak House is based on her, though she went on being friends with Dickens himself!). She wrote beautifully on her picture of the town: “When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glistening snow, while the myrtle-green sea tumbles–there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape.”

902_05_1857556In 1844 she underwent a course of the mesmerism,which she declared returned her to health within months and wrote an account of her case, which caused friction with her sister and brother-in-law, the conventional doctor! In 1845 she left Tynemouth for the Lake District and her new home The Knoll, which she would live in for the rest of her life. In 1846 she made a tour of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria and wrote Eastern Life, Present and Past, which also caused controversy with its “infidel tendency.” She also published a volume called which stated that freedom and rationality, not command and obediance, should be the basis of education. She followed up with a history volume written from the view of a “philosophical Radical”, Household EducationThe History of the Thirty Years’ Peace, 1816–1846. She was always busy, contributing weekly to The Daily News, visiting Ireland and writing Letters from Ireland, and writing for Westminster Review. Her 1838 book How to Observe Morals and Manners laid out some of her general views, that very general social laws influence the life of any society, such as the principle of progress, the emergence of science as the most advanced product of human intellectual endeavor, and the significance of population dynamics and natural physical environment (principles which still hold true today!).

In 1855 she found she suffered from heart disease and started work on her autobiography (though she lived for 20 more years). It was published in 2 volumes posthumously in 1877. She also undertook the translation of Auguste Comte into English, which was published as The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau), which Comte himself recommeneded to his students rather than his own!

She died at The Knoll on June 27, 1876.

Some sources on Martineau’s life:
Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography: With Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman (1877)
Deborah Anna Logan, The Hour and the Woman: Harriet Martineau’s “Somewhat Remarkable” Life, 2002
Valerie Sanders, Reason Over Passion: Harriet Martineau and the Victorian Novel, 1986
David Deeirdre, Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot (1989)

I am crawling out briefly from a revision/research cave to celebrate the birthday of a woman who may not be particularly well-known in history, but who I’ve always found to be interesting, Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of Empress Josephine, a woman whose life was made very unhappy by duty to her stepfather, but who managed to carve out a small happiness and role for herself.  Who are some of your own favorite lesser-known heroines???

hortenseHortense Eugenie Cecile de Beauharnais Bonaparte, daughter of Empress Josephine, Queen Consort of Holland, mother of Napoleon III, and interesting woman in her own right! She was born on April 10 in 1783.

Hortense was born in Paris, the daughter of the nobleman Alexandre, vicomte de Beauharnais and his wife Josephine, their second living child (she had an older brother, Eugene). Her parents’ marriage was never very happy, and they separated informally soon after her birth. Her father was guillotined on July 23, 1794, a few days before the end of the Terror, and her mother barely escaped with her life. Josephine was released from prison and reunited with her children on August 6, but it was a struggle to maintain the family financially. Two years later Josephine married Napoleon, and Hortense was later sent to be educated at the school of Madame Campan (who had been a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette) in St-Germain-en-Laye, along with Napoleon’s sister Caroline. Hortense made many friends at school, and became well-known for her pretty blonde looks and her musical skill (she later composed marches for her stepfather’s Army). One of her friends at this school was US President Monroe’s daughter Eliza, who later named her own daughter Hortensia.

In 1802, Hortense married Napoleon’s brother Louis Bonaparte, despite her misgivings, and they went on to have 3 sons despite a very rocky marriage (Napoleon Louis Charles, 1802-1807; Napoleon Louis, 1804-1831; and Charles Louis Napoleon, 1808-1873, who went on to become Emperor of France). In 1806 Louis became King of Holland, and Hortense set up her court at The Hague, taking refuge from her unhappy marriage in social events and friendships (including those with handsome men!). They were deposed in 1810, but Louis remained in Holland for another 3 years, writing poetry in privacy, until forced to return to France in 1813. The couple then lived separate lives.

Hortense fell in love with Colonel Charles Joseph, the comte de Flauhaut, a man renowned for his handsome looks, sophisticated intelligence, and rumored to be the illegitimate son of Talleyrand. In 1811, at a secluded inn in Switzerland, Hortense gave birth to their son, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph (who was later made duc de Morny his half-brother). After the defeat of Napoleon and the Bourbon Restoration in 1814 Hortense received the protection of Tsar Alexander and went on living at her estate, but when her stepfather returned she supported him. On his final defeat at Waterloo, she traveled to Germany and Italy before settling at the Chateau of Arenenberg in Thurgau in 1817. There she worked on her music, had parties with her friends, and fell in love once in a while. She lived there until her death on October 5, 1837 and was buried next to her mother at St-Pierre-St-Paul church near Malmaison.

Information on Hortense’s life can be found in any biography of Josephine or Napoleon III. A couple books I like are:
Nina Epton, Josephine: The Empress and Her Children (1976)
Francois Jarry, Hortense de Beauharnais (1999). This one is in French, which I read very slooooowly, but worth the effort!

Posted in Research | 2 Replies

It’s so wonderful to be back at the Riskies again!  It feels like this is the Winter That Will Not End (illness, snow, rinse, repeat), but I am finally seeing the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.  And one of the best things about spring (maybe0 being on the way, is the release of a very special project!

As a Risky reader will know, I range among many different time periods in my writing–Regency, Elizabethan, Renaissance, etc.  One of my very favorite time periods (especially with the Downton mania of the last few years!) is the Edwardian/WWI/1920s era.  It’s very reminiscent of the Regency in many ways (warfare, fast-moving societal changes, not to mention amazing clothes…), but I’ve only been able to write one 1920s story in the past (Girl With the Beaded Mask), but all that changed a few months ago.

ML1I have 3 great writer friends I get to see (almost) every Friday night, at 4:30 happy hour on the dot, at the Martini Lounge a few miles from my house.  This is an amazing place, said to have been a speakeasy in the 1920s (though when I was a kid, it was my grandfather’s favorite donut shop, where I could eat as many chocolate pastries as I wanted while he talked to his old-man friends about farming!).  Now it’s an elegant bar/steakhouse, with velvet booths, dim lighting, jazz music, and an astonishing array of cocktails.  Kathy L Wheeler, Alicia Dean, Krysta Scott, and I meet to talk over what we’re writing, and one eveing we had the brilliant idea–why didn’t we write something together!  Set at the Martini Lounge!  So 4 girls from the 1920s had their beginnings in 4 connected novellas that have now been launched out into the world.  Much like our 4 heroines left their English homes for new lives in NYC….

I wondered what those 4 heroines–Lady Jessica (an earl’s daughter who would rather be a journalist than dance at deb balls), Lady Meggie (her schoolfriend, who would rather sing in a jazz band and seek fame and fortune than dance at deb balls), Eliza (a maidservant who fled a lecherous employer–only to find herself in an even worse jam on the streets of NY), and Charlotte (Jess and Meggie’s shy friend, who finds the strength to flee an arranged marriage and follow her own dreams), would drink when they meet at the Martini Lounge’s 1920s counterpart Club 501?

Ml4CoverAlicia Dean says Eliza’s drink choice is easy–a Fallen Angel!

1/12 oz gin
1/2 tsp white creme de menthe
1/2 lemon juice
a dash of bitters
a cherry

Shake all ingredients (except cherry) with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with the cherry and serve.

 

 

 

 

ML2CoverKathy L Wheeler chose Meggie’s–a Virgin Mary (since Meggie is a singer, she doesn’t drink much on the job–but that doesn’t count for after hours!)

4 oz tomato juice, 1 dash lemon juice, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 drops tabasco

Fill a large wine glass with ice. Add tomato juice, then the rest of the ingredients. Stir and garnish with a wedge of lime.

 

 

 

 

ML1CoverI found out that one of my favorite (modern day) drinks, a French 75, was also very popular in the 1920s!!!  (even with one of the models for Lady Jessica, Nancy Mitford), so I decided Jess could drink that…

1 oz. gin
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
Brut Champagne or a dry sparkling white wine
Lemon twist, to garnish

Combine gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake until well chilled and strain into a glass. Top with Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist to serve.

 

 

Ml3CoverAnd for Charli, who has dreams of opening her own bakery, a caramel apple martini!

2 parts Schnapps, butterscotch, 2 parts Sour Apple Pucker, 1 part vodka.  Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

 

 

 

 

 

We are so excited to have these stories out in the world!!!  To one commenter today, we’ll give copies of the stories (either e-book or, in a few weeks, hard copies), plus a Martini Club 4 cocktail glass for mixing up your own favorite cocktails.  Do you have a favorite drink?  Any special happy-hour rituals with friends??

(to buy the ML stories, here is the link on Amazon, or you can visit my website for more info…)

(and if you’d like a glimpse of the real Club 501, here is their website!)

 

 

 

Murder in the Queen's GardenFebruary 3 was the release date for the third Kate Haywood Elizabethan Mystery, Murder in the Queen’s Garden!  I loved writing this one–summer at beautiful Nonsuch Palace, alchemy, dancing, courtly skullduggery…

To celebrate, I’m taking a look at why I love this time period so much–and giving away a signed copy to one commenter…

I’ve been fascinated by the Elizabethan age for as long as I can remember! When I was a kid, I would read everything I could find about the period—romance novels, thick history books I could barely lift off the library shelf, Shakespeare plays, and bawdy poetry I couldn’t really figure out, but I liked the weird words such as “fie, away, sir!” and “z’wounds!” I dressed up as Anne Boleyn for a fifth grade book report, and spent days watching videos like The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R.

That’s what I love the most about writing the adventures of Kate Haywood—getting to live at the court of Queen Elizabeth, losing myself in that world and seeing I through Kate’s eyes, but then returning to my cozy house with running water and electricity! (I do love the 16th century, but not really enough to want an open sewer running down the middle of my street, or cooking a roast over and open fire while trying not to set my petticoats on fire…)

Kate is a young lady with many interests. She is the queen’s favorite musician, a performer and composer, as well as the catcher of villains who try to harm the new queen. She finds herself in the very midst of all the excitement of the day, and in vicariously living her life I get to be there, too. A bit like the archaeologist I wanted to be when I was a kid, before I realized how dusty the job would be!

So—what are some of my favorite things about Queen Elizabeth and her world?

  1. There were so many strong, fascinating women in charge! Not just Elizabeth herself (who overcame a lonely, dangerous upbringing to become the most famous monarch in English history), but her mother and stepmothers, Mary Queen of Scots and her mother Marie of Guise, Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers, and so many others)
  2. The wondrous explosion of the creative arts, especially theater, music, and poetry (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sidney, Spencer, to name just a few)
  3. The Age of Exploration. Men willing to pack themselves into tiny wooden boxes and launch across the oceans to find lands that might or might not be out there. That’s amazing to a homebody like me!
  4. The advances in science and medicine
  5. And, because I am a girly-girl, the clothes! This isn’t the era whose fashions I would most want to wear myself (that would be the Regency—high waists and lighter corsets!), but the fashions of the Elizabethan era are so fascinatingly elaborate, with lovely fabrics and colors, intricate embroidery and lace ruffs. (for a closer look, Janet Arnold’s wonderful Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d is a great source)
  6. The architecture. Places like Hardwick Hall and Hampton Court, and Nonsuch Palace (which is gone now, but which Kate gets to explore in Murder in the Queen’s Garden!) are amazing settings for royal shenanigans!

For more “behind the book” info on Kate Haywood and her adventures, you can visit my website at http://amandacarmack.com! I’m also on Facebook and spend way too much time on Pinterest.

What is your favorite time period? Where would you visit if you had a time machine???

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