Happy weekend, everyone! The sun is shining, flowers are blooming, it’s spring–and I wrote The End on my WIP. It is Fug Madness on Go Fug Yourself. I have Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs. Happy, happy, happy Saturday! I also have a few updates on my Amanda McCabe site here, including an excerpt from The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor. And Laurel McKee’s site is having its Big Debut, right here! A few tweaks still need, well, tweaking, but there’s release info, historical background on Ireland in 1798, and an excerpt. Let me know what you think!

A few days ago, I took a quiz on Facebook called “What kind of writer are you?” I got the result–Jane Austen. Woo-hoo! What romance writer wouldn’t love that? But then I started wondering if, in real writing life, I might owe more stylistically to the Brontes. I do love the Dramatic Moment, the Big Reveal, the whole wandering on the moors shouting things like “How can I live without my love?” type stuff.

Maybe it’s because Jane Eyre was the first “classic” I ever read (except for things like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women), and wow did I love it. I’ve been a sucker for 19th century England (and moor-wandering) ever since. I adore the Brontes, both their books and their oddball family story.

Which seems appropriate, since in one month from today, on April 21, it will be Charlotte Bronte’s birthday! Nothing like an early happy birthday. She was born April 21, 1816 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the third of 6 children of Patrick Bronte, clergyman, and Maria Branwell. In April 1821, the family moved to the famous parsonage at Haworth (you can see its website here), where Patrick was appointed Perpetual Curate. Maria died in September that year, leaving her five daughters and son to the indifferent care of her sister, Elizabeth Branwell (who seems to have stayed mostly in her own room!). In 1824, Charlotte and 3 of her sisters (Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, Anne being too young) went to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which gained infamy as the wretched Lowood School in Jane Eyre). Maria and Elizabeth died there, and Charlotte and Emily were never really healthy afterwards.

Back home at the parsonage, Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell set about chronicling their imaginary worlds of Gondal and Angria, convoluted sagas that still exist in partial manuscripts. Charlotte went on to continue her education in 1831 at Roe Head, where she wrote her first novella, The Green Dwarf (1833). She taught at the school from 1835 to 1838, taking up her first governess position in 1839. In 1842, she and Emily went to study in Brussels, at a pensionnat run by Constantin Heger and his wife Claire. After Emily departed, Charlotte’s stay in Brussels took a turn into loneliness, homesickness, and a crush on the married Constantin (this time was used as inspiration for her later novels The Professor and Villette).

Back home again in Yorkshire, the three sisters published a volume of poetry in 1846, under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (the volume only sold 2 copies, but the names stuck for a while). Jane Eyre was published to much acclaim in 1847, but much sorrow was just around the corner. Branwell, rumored to be a drunk and a laudanum addict, died in September 1848. (When I dropped into the National Portrait Gallery last fall, I made a point of going to look at his portrait of the sisters which hangs there). Emily and Anne died soon after, in December 1848 and May 1849, leaving Charlotte alone with their father.

But things were not entirely bleak. After the great success of JE, Charlotte visited London occasionally, where she revealed her true identity and met other authors, including Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell (who wrote the first Charlotte Bronte biography), Thackeray, and GH Lewes. In June 1854, she married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, and soon after became pregnant. She died, along with the unborn child, on March 31, 1855, at the age of 38. She was buried in the Bronte family vault in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels at Haworth.

I have a big pile of Bronte biographies on my shelves, but some favorites are: Juliet Barker’s The Brontes; Rebecca Fraser’s Charlotte Bronte; Margot Peters’ Charlotte Bronte, Unquiet Soul; and The Oxford Reader’s Companion to the Brontes.

Do you love the Brontes, too? What are your favorites among their books? Anyone visited Haworth (I haven’t had the chance yet, but it’s high on my Travel Wish List!) Have a good Saturday, everyone…

When Amanda and I first discussed me writing today’s blog, I had suggested writing about some obscure 18th century music that had been recently discovered in the North East of England, but I also mentioned that I was going to Venice. Amanda kindly gave me a choice, and because Venice is Venice, you are getting Venice.

Because Carnival finished a few days before I arrived and the paving stones still were littered with confetti, I include a picture of the mannequin from the lobby of my hotel. The dress was absolutely stunning. Carnival of course died out in the early decades of the 20th century and was revived in 1979. Even the mask making had be re-learnt. It is possible to buy high-quality masks based on traditional designs, based on the Commedia dell’Arte. These are held in place either by ribbons or in the case of some traditional women’s masks, by clamping a little piece with your lips. When wearing a mask, women were expected to be silent. The Venetian tradition of mass gives rise to the masquerade balls.

More than any other city, Venice still evokes the spirit of the past. To travel to Venice is to step back into another world, primarily because there are no cars. Motorboats are strictly regulated and once you are in the back streets the main noise is silence or the sound of voices. Gondolas do ply their trade, but most people walk.

One of the main differences between today’s gondolas and the gondolas that Byron, Shelley, or a whole host of other Regency aristocrats would have taken is that the wooden shelter, or felze, is no longer used. It’s possible to see an early 19th century gondola in the courtyard of Ca’Rezzonico, one of the few palazzos on the Grand Canal open to the public, and dedicated to the 18th century. Its double story ballroom with its painted frescoes and magnificent chandeliers is highly evocative. But I was surprised to see how much trompe l’oeil was used rather than actual plaster!

Both of the famous cafes on St. Marks’s Plaza–Florian’s (1720) and Quadri’s (1775) has painted interiors but they only date from the 1850s. It is still possible at both cafes to get proper bittersweet hot chocolate. Personally, I preferred Quadri’s, but it was a close run thing. You are served a pot of hot chocolate, a jug of warm milk, and sugar. It is up to you to make the chocolate how you want it. My husband reported that the coffee was also very good. Quadri’s was known as the Austrian cafe during the occupation, and its upstairs restaurant has been serving meals since 1844.

So much of the 18th century is preserved because after Napoleon conquered the Venetian Republic in 1797, many Venetians lost their money. It was only through Canova’s efforts at the peace conference that many of Venice’s treasures, including the 4 horses, were returned. Some paintings were only returned in the 1970s, and the Louvre still holds a few. Unfortunately Austria did retain control of the city until 1866, when the citizens joined the new Kingdom of Italy.

Venice, because of its art, has always been an important stop on the Grand Tour. For example, most of Caneletto’s paintings were bought by Englishmen. This might have something to do with the British consul at the time, Joseph Smith, also being Caneletto’s agent. (As an aside for Diane, in 1717 Smith married one Catherine Tofts, who sang at Drury Lane and Haymarket before going to Venice in 1711). With its Carnival, its gaming houses (the Ridotto closed in 1774, but gaming continued in private houses, and today Venice has one of the few official casinos) and general atmosphere of frivolity because life is short, Venice exerted powerful influence on the men and women who visited it, and still does.

Michelle Styles’s latest UK release is Impoverished Miss, Convenient Wife, and is set in 1813 Northumberland. Vist her website here for more details!

Things change, people change, and time moves on.

(Unless one has a time machine. And Todd hasn’t built one for me yet, though he did give a talk this week to a group of eminent physicists on the cool things one could do with a time machine! That’s my trusty Todd. Who else would have the nerve to do something like that?)

But, as I said, time moves on. And I’ve decided that now is the time for me to move on.

I think I really need to focus on my young adult writing now, for one thing. (I’m not great with focus, and I find that cutting out distractions helps there.)

Plus, I really need to focus on my writing. That is, my work-in-progress. I love the Riskies, I love being here with all of you wonderful folks, and talking about Drury Lane and the rules of duels and the writing process and great covers and Gerard Butler and Clive Owen and Orlando Bloom and great Jane Austen (and Scarlet Pimpernel) movies…but sometimes I love it too much.

Sometimes it takes up too much of my time, and energy.

So I’ll be leaving the Riskies. (Wow, it’s hard to type that!)

Next week will be my final week here…and so I decided I wanted to do a humorous post next week, and give you all the heads-up and farewell today….so that next week I can sign off with a lighthearted post, if not with a light heart.

I will miss you all so much! Though I will stop by from time to time, and I may even do a guest blog every now and then…who knows? (I still owe Diane that Jane Austen’s Phantom that I promised!)

As to the Jane Austen Movie Club, it will be up to the other Riskies whether or not it will continue. We were getting fewer and fewer comments on it anyway, so I think if it goes, it goes at a sensible time. We did have some great discussions!

So to my five fellow bloggers and all of you wonderful readers and commenters: thanks for all the fun, all the education and information. Thanks for your friendship and warmth and concern. Thanks for years of good times!

I’ll miss you all….

Cara
Cara King, who will still try to stay Risky