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Monthly Archives: May 2008

Regency Weddings

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Amanda is attending her brother’s wedding today so I volunteered to blog for her. I hope she’ll show us photos of her dress, but until then, let’s talk about Regency weddings.

Regency brides did wear white, but they didn’t have to. In the Regency, white gowns were popular for many occasions. Other colors like pale pink and blue were also worn at weddings. The older the bride, the darker the color. Wedding dresses were worn after the wedding, too. By the time Queen Victoria became a bride and wore white, the white wedding dress was well on its way to becoming a tradition.

Princess Charlotte, who wed Prince Leopold in 1816, wore a dress of silver lamé, embroidered in silver.

Sites that tell more about Regency Weddings:

Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion

Regency Weddings

Quick facts about Regency Weddings:

1. Weddings could take place after reading of the Banns, a license, or a special license. Banns must be read for three consecutive Sundays in the parishes of both the prospective bride and groom. A license, purchased from the bishop of the diocese, did away with the banns but the couple still had to be married in the parish church. A special license, purchased from the Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed the couple to be married in a location other than a church and without banns. Licenses were never blank; different names could not be substituted.

2. Scottish weddings went by different rules. In Scotland couples could be married by declaring themselves married in front of witnesses, by making a promise to marry followed by intercourse, or by living together and calling themselves married.

3. Weddings could not be performed by proxy. Both the bride and groom had to be present.

4. Ship captains could not perform marriages. Couples could be married aboard ship, but only by clergy. (How many times have you read that plot?)

5. Brides had wedding rings; grooms did not. The bride could give the groom a ring as a wedding gift, but it was not part of the ceremony and didn’t symbolize he was married.

Do you want a Regency Wedding? There are many sites on the internet offering custom made Regency wedding dresses:

Regency Reproductions

Fashions in Time

Or if you are handy, like Cara, you could make your Regency gown:

McCall’s Pattern 202 Regency era Empire Waisted Wedding Gown

I was married a Brazillion years ago, before a bride would even DREAM of a strapless gown. Before I married, I’d never read Georgette Heyer or Regency Romances and it had been a few years since I’d read Jane Austen.

Take a look at my wedding dress.
It’s a little hard to tell here, but it has an empire waist. It’s a Regency Dress!

Do you have any questions about Regency weddings?

Did anyone else have a Regency wedding dress?

Don’t forget to stop by on Monday for Grand Central Publishing editor Alex Logan

And while you are blogging on Monday, stop by The Wet Noodle Posse. My friend Darlene Gardner is blogging about researching character occupations.

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Accessible Beauty

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Brace yourselves–I have an actual topic today!


As we might have mentioned, Amanda and I are presenting a workshop at this summer’s Beau Monde Conference entitled, Keeping It Real: Making Your Historical Characters Come Alive. Here’s the brief description:

Just because you’re writing in a distant time period doesn’t mean your characters should be distant to your readers. Join award-winning historical authors Amanda McCabe and Megan Frampton as they discuss how to make your characters come alive through dialogue, attitudes, description and actions, while still remaining true to the period.

Amanda and I will be working on the outline/presentation in upcoming months, and when I saw this article, I realized there were some aspects of ‘keeping it real’ I hadn’t thought of:


Hollywood’s Changing Face of Beauty
From Greta Garbo to Kate Hudson, How Beauty Has Changed in America

The article says that while classic beauties were popular before, quirkier, more “accessible” beauty is what Americans find attractive.

Which, of course, led me to consider what readers find attractive in heroines. If you’re Of A Certain Reading Age, you likely read a lot of those ’80s romances where the heroine was beyond gorgeous: Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth (!–we are reading about English people, remember). The thing that usually wasn’t perfect about them was how they didn’t know they were perfect. Or something lame and punting like that.

Now our heroines have flaws, flaws that make them more real: Their hair is too curly, their hips are too big, their mouths are too wide, their eyes are just plain brown, they are too short or too tall, or whatever. We, as readers, want to read about women who are like us, not perfect goddesses on pedestals.

What do you think our changing attitudes about beauty reveal about us? Do you find Angelina, the Jessicas, Jennifer, Megan F(ox)–not me!, Halle, et al stunning? What do you like about those old romances in terms of their heroines’ descriptions? What do you like about current heroines’ looks?

Thanks for your comments!

Megan

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Excellent adventures at Basildon Park

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On my trip back to England last week to visit the old man who is not a tree (renamed the Retired Admiral because of his luxuriant white beard) I also visited Basildon Park near Reading. It’s the house that was used as Netherfield in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice.

The house was designed by architect John Carr for a rich nabob, Francis Sykes–apparently Berkshire, close to London, was a favorite retirement spot for those who had made their fortunes in India. It changed hands several times for the next century and a half, narrowly escaping demolition and development in the early twentieth century. At one point it was offered to the American market, as a house to be dismantled and erected across the Atlantic, but 1929 probably wasn’t the best year for such an offer. The house was taken over by the military during World War II. Consequently it was fairly messed up when Lord and Lady Iliffe acquired it in 1951 and set to restoring it. You can see what a beautiful house it now is by checking out the photo gallery (copyrighted material so I’m leaving it alone).

Here’s the outside of the house. I’m lurking in the shade under the tree (and my brother forgot to set the butt filter, as you can see).

There’s a whole exhibit dedicated to what they had to do to prepare the house for filming P&P–fragile carpets were rolled and removed from the first (that’s second to you Americans) floor by forklift and great pains were taken to protect the house’s delicate features. The furniture was made specially for the movie.

So how authentic is the house inside? I was a bit disappointed, to be honest. Lady Iliffe, who we heard a lot about–she died only a year or so ago, and lived on the premises while the National Trust maintained the house–decorated the house to her taste. Altogether it’s a bit of a mish-mash of style. The Oxagon Drawing Room, for instance, has a Victorian ceiling, and Lady Iliffe, with the help of her cook, lined the walls with red felt to show off her paintings better–and of course colors like Pompeian red would have been very fashionable. But underneath the red felt is the blue green color that Georgians also loved. To give her credit, Lady Iliffe plundered other houses designed by Carr, going on expeditions to Yorkshire, where most of his work is, and loading a truck with doors and fireplaces.

Here are some more views of the exterior. As you can see it was a gorgeous sunny day.

The statues are of Alcibiades’s dog, and, according to my brother, the goddess of leprosy.

Naturally after a stroll through the house and garden we had to have afternoon tea. I had Victoria sponge and my brother had chocolate cake. That’s my arm in the pic. My brother was also very anxious that his shot of the toilets be included (in the stable block) so here they are.


And what else did I do over there? I’m happy to announce that I did get to Sir John Soane’s Museum–cleaning that place must be a nightmare–met with my editor, took a tour of Shakespeare’s Globe and saw part of a rehearsal of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and visited St. Paul’s where Wellington is buried, and heard the choir at Evensong. We also had a trip to Bristol, one of my favorite places.

What have you been doing this week?

I’m blogging today at the Wet Noodle Posse on how to research historical costume–come on over and take a look!

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Georgiana

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Ever since it came out, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the Whitbread Award winning biography by Amanda Foreman, has been on my TBR list. A few weeks ago, I caught up with it.

I already knew a little about Georgiana before reading the book. I knew that she was active in Whig politics, married young, amassed enormous gambling debts and lived in a ménage à trois with the Duke and her friend (and possibly lover) Lady Elizabeth Foster for over twenty years. I also knew, through my research on the history of childbirth, that she was an affectionate mother and breastfed her first child, a girl, for over a year despite family pressure and “their impatience for a son and their fancying I shan’t so soon if I suckle.” I was intrigued by all these things and not judgmental (it’s not surprising that a girl married at 17 to a man with little affection for her should run into trouble) but until I read the bio, I didn’t get a clear sense of how all these aspects of Georgiana merged into a complex and fascinating woman. I’m not going to go on and on about it, since many of you have probably already read the book. For any who haven’t, I highly recommend it.

One thing that struck me while reading is how much the raciness of the Georgian period echoed through the Regency and has influenced characters in Regency fiction, especially older heroes/heroines or the parents of younger ones. The mother of the hero of Georgette Heyer’s False Colours is much like Georgiana, married young to a man who did not appreciate her, unable to control her gambling. In Heyer’s Sylvester, the hero’s mother, a duchess, is crippled like Georgiana’s sister, Lady Bessborough and like Georgiana, writes poetry. There’s also a thread of Georgian looseness (liberal politics, playing with gender roles) in modern Regency set romances like those of fellow Risky Janet and Risky friend Pam Rosenthal. I like it. A lot.

The book is also making me more interested in the upcoming film starring Keira Knightley, which is said to be adapted from the book. Of course I have some qualms as to how far it will be adapted. Georgiana’s life was so interesting it shouldn’t need the Hollywood treatment. As for Keira Knightley, I like her as an actress but I’m not sure about her in this role. But we’ll see and I’m sure we will talk about it!

Another thing I really want to do now is read some of the published letters of her daughter Harriet (“Hary-O”), who seems to have been a clever and interesting woman and even rather sane considering the milieu to which she was born.

If you read Georgiana, what did you think? What are your favorite period bios? Are you looking forward to this film?

And do you like a splash of Georgian in your Regency?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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I Prefer Not To

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We all have our tastes, our preferences, our prejudices. (I know I do.)

And one thing I’ve figured out: sometimes I have a preference (or, if you prefer, a prejudice) that has a clear reason for being — a motivation, if you will — but I haven’t figured out what this reason is. (This leads to those “I really hate romances set on Greek Islands but I have no idea why” moments.) (You might also think it leads to those “I can’t understand why you enjoy sugar in your tea” moments, but that’s quite a different thing. I need no subtle motivation to know that sugar in tea is just a sad, sad thing.)

Why is this on my mind? Because I’ve just reasoned out the reason for one of my prejudices preferences.

And this makes me happy. Any sign that even the smallest part of my brain (or, indeed, any part of the world) is organized by something approaching logic makes me feel warm and snug and smug.

Now, I have mentioned that one might prefer to call this preference of mine a prejudice, right??? And I have made it clear that this is just my taste, my bias, one of my likes and dislikes??? (And I do have lots and lots of dislikes, particularly concerning vegetables and blue eye shadow.)

Because I honestly mean no criticism of anyone’s books (even books I may have read). After all, my refusal to eat cauliflower in no way implies that I dislike, disparage, or disrespect the cauliflower on your plate! And I particularly don’t disapprove of you for eating it (or reading or writing it.)

So…here it is.

I realized quite a while ago that I get surprisingly annoyed at reading historicals in which there exists perfect birth control… You know, the book where the virgin aristocratic heiress has a naughty aunt who teaches her (or provides her with) a fool-proof way to fool around with some hunky fool for as many months as she wants, with zero chance of pregnancy.

Now, it’s not like I always insist on perfect historical authenticity or total realism…after all, I’m a big fan of Shakespeare and Georgette Heyer. (Yes, I know that when Viola and Rosalind and Leonie dressed up as men they would still have looked like girls…but I just don’t care!)

So…why this great irritation on my part? Why does the better-than-the-year-2008 contraception in 1808 in just get under my skin? Well, I finally figured it out.

The way I see it, a huge amount of the psychology, sociology, laws, economics, and fashion involving middle and upper-class women in 1808 Britain was based on the fact that reliable contraception did not exist.

After all, think how much the invention of the pill affected social norms and behavior involving everything from cohabitation to premarital sex to middle-class wives working outside the home to romance novels to adoption.

So, for me, reading a historical with foolproof contraception is as bizarre as reading some of the science fiction written in the 1950’s — the kind where the fifty-year-old workaholic hero’s wife has all her housework, shopping and entertaining done by robots, but she still doesn’t have a job or even a hobby. (I’m sorry, but what does she do all day???)

So there you have it. When it comes to reading about perfect contraception in 1808 (or mindless housewives in 2828)…I simply would prefer not to.

Cara
Cara King, who once wrote an essay arguing Bartleby the Scrivener was a ghost

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged | 25 Replies
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