I’m a magpie. I’m drawn to shiny, sparkly things and always have been. I love glitter, sequins, chandeliers, beaded bookmarks and of course, jewelry. It doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, after I lost one of a pair of opal (luckily, not antique) earrings at a hotel, I decided I prefer to own jewelry I won’t feel terribly guilty about losing. I’m most attracted to jewelry that is unusual, vintage or artsy. I’ve even dabbled in jewelry making; though my results are not professional, it’s fun.
I love when I have to research jewelry for a story. One of my favorite sources is Three Graces Antique Jewelry, a good place for research and fantasy shopping. Most of the images in this post are from Three Graces. I based a ring in one of my books on this one, substituting sapphires for the rubies.
I’ve also learned that for the heroine on a budget like me, there were options that were less expensive than gold and gemstones.
I remember seeing the term “pinchbeck” in Georgette Heyer novel and wondered what it meant. It turns out it’s an alloy of copper and zinc invented by Christopher Pinchbeck (1670-1732) and used extensively to make durable jewelry that was less expensive than gold. The earrings to the left are gold, to the right, pinchbeck, both early 19th century. I think both are very pretty! One could wear these to a ball, with a pretty white gown if one were young, or with more vibrant colors if older (I love gold with green).
The term “paste” used to make me think of plastic (ugh!) but it actually refers to cut leaded glass faceted to resemble real gemstones. Being softer, it was trickier to cut. And some of it is very pretty as well. Here I have several sets of earrings, diamonds above, paste below. Frankly, I cannot tell the difference! Any of them would be just the thing for a night with my lover at the opera.
The term “parure” refers to a set of matching jewelry. The first is amethyst, the other is emerald-colored paste. I think these parures would be great for a presentation at court. Since the combination of high waists and hoop skirts couldn’t flatter any figure, pretty trinkets like this would help to bring the eye toward the face, instead.
Here are some more period baubles. Can you guess what period they are and can you tell the paste and pinchbeck from the real? (Don’t worry if you can’t–I was very surprised by some of them.) Where would you wear them?
Recently–or actually, all of the time–authors on Twitter were discussing copy edits, and their bad habits.
One commented THAT she seemed to use THAT all the time, and THAT it was THAT annoying to find in her manuscript.
Others have talked about their heroines making certain expressions continually, such as glaring, and heroes often drawl (especially Regency heroes!) beyond even the deepest of Southerners.
One of my tells is starting blog posts with “So,” which I do in real life a lot. One of my other tells is repeating the same information in the next sentence, just in case you didn’t get it the first time. Yeah, not such a good habit.
Resulting in the ever popular *facepalm*. And then there are thematic tells, but that is for a much longer post.
Certain authors have such distinctive tells you can immediately identify their work by a few sentences. For example (and some of these are so, so easy!):
Sentences that last AT LEAST half a page (hello, Mr. Faulkner!) Sentences that are one word and one entire paragraph (Robin Schone and, um, me) No capital letters (It was just e.e. cummings‘ birthday) No punctuation (this isn’t quite the same thing, but apparently Christopher Walken removes all the punctuation from his scripts which results in his intriguing reading of his material). Plus many early authors had unfamiliar punctuation, but that is more likely due to the changes in the art rather than a tell itself. Certain words; I have yet to read a Barbara Hambly where I didn’t stumble across a word I had no idea of its meaning, usually within the first two pages. Always the first five.
Some of these tells result in what editors and agents are apparently always looking for, which is voice. I’ve been told I have a strong writing voice, which is good, unless you’re not fond of the voice in question.
What tells have you noticed in authors? If you’re an author, what is your best and worst tell? Megan
Today is the anniversary of the date that resonates in English people’s minds the way 1776 does here, a rather grandiose way of saying that it’s one date most people probably know: October 14, 1066. The Battle of Hastings was the last invasion of England when a French Norseman, William the Conqueror, invaded, walloped the Saxon nobility and the King, and took over the country, changing the language and introducing snails as the national dish. There are many sites about this so I can promise you much time-wasting lies ahead of you should you wish to pursue it.
One of the most remarkable pieces of art in the world is the Bayeux Tapestry, which records the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself. It’s not actually a tapestry, but is embroidery on linen, eight pieces joined to a massive piece about 20″ tall and 230′ long. Legend has it that it was created by William’s wife Matilda and it’s sometimes referred to still as la tapisserie de la reine Mathilde. More likely it was commissioned by William’s half brother Bishop Odo and made by monks in the south of England.
The original is on display in France and there is a Victorian copy in the museum of my home town, Reading.
Today I’m all over the blogosphere talking about my fictional second invasion by the French in 1797 when Jane Austen was a vampire, Jane and the Damned. There’s a review and a guest blog at Book Faery and a discussion at Austen Authors on what Jane Austen was really like.
You can still enter the contest at Vampchix to win a copy of Bespelling Jane Austen.
As most of you probably know, the English drink tea. Tea was introduced in England after 1650. I’m sure that most of us have read a historical in which the phrase “a dish” of tea is used rather than the more familiar “cup” of tea. This site tells us that the first tea cups were Chinese in origin and were shallow saucers, and did not have handles. From the same site:
100 years after the introduction of tea in England, handles were not yet seen on tea cups, but English potters had introduced saucers to the bowls. The tea-drinkers thought the saucer was there to pour the tea into to cool it and then they would sip the tea from the saucer. Later the saucer was used to hold spillage and the use of the cup and saucer became the tradition used today with the addition of handles.
Britain Express has a good overview of the history of tea and coffee houses. Tea was taxed by 1676. A hundred years later, we know how that taxation thing worked for the British when they were across the pond. According to this site, the tax rose to 119% and guess what?! Tea smuggling, that’s what. And guess what else! People put stuff that wasn’t tea in the tea. What’s that thing the French say about change and the same old thing?
My favorite tea ever is Lapsang Souchang. I love the smoky flavor. At work, however, I drink Lipton. It gets my day going. What about you guys? Do you drink tea? What kind? If you were a tea smuggler where would you hide your tea?
Welcome to the second Spooky Tuesday of October! As I was looking around online and in library books for suitable Halloween-ish material for this month, there was way too much to choose from. Today we’ll look at some Ghosts of Famous People, next week some unusual apparitions….
The Tudors provide an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the spirit world. All of them seem to haunt one (or several) places, with lots of shrieking and carrying of heads and things like that. We’ll start by taking a look at some of them:
Hampton Court is rumored to be haunted by at least two of Henry VIII’s wives, Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour. Wife five, Catherine was charged with adultery and placed under house arrest at Hampton Court. The story says that one day she broke free from her guarded rooms and ran down the gallery to try and reach her husband to plead for her life while he was at prayer in the chapel. She was soon retrieved by the guards and dragged back to her rooms, kicking and screaming. Sometimes she can still be heard, and even seen, running and shrieking down the gallery. Ernest Law’s A Short History of Hampton Court (1897) says she runs “towards the door of the Royal Pew, and just as she reaches it, has been observed to hurry back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair, uttering at the same time the most unearthly shrieks, till she passes through the door at the end of the gallery.” In 1999 two women on separate tours on the same evening fainted at the same spot in the gallery and declared they suddenly felt frightened. There’s even a rumored video of a “ghost” (possibly Catherine), but I do wonder why the ghost seems able to close the doors so carefully…
Jane Seymour, wife three, is a much more placid ghost (as she was probably a more placid person in life!). She walks through the cobbled courtyard carrying a lighted candle and disappears into a wall.
Anne Boleyn is probably the most active of the Tudor wives, and the most dramatic! She is seen at the Tower, with numerous tales of sitings by guards and tourists. She walks near the White Tower, close to the place where the scaffold was erected, and in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula where she is buried (sometimes she even leads processions of the executed up the aisle). At Hever Castle she’s seen in the gardens, and on a bridge over the River Eden on Christmas Eve. It’s also said that every year on May 19, the anniversary of her death, a black coach drawn by four black horses races up to Blickling Hall with Anne sitting inside with her head on her lap. The coach stops and she gets out and disappears into the house….
Mary Queen of Scots is one of busiest ghosts in all of England. She seems to haunt every place she ever lived in or even passed by one day. She haunts Stirling Castle, where she’s a sort of pinkish shadow; Borthwick Castle, where she appears in disguise in boy’s clothes (a disguise she used to escape her captors there); Loch Leven Castle; Hermitage Castle in the Borders (she never stayed there, but Bothwell did once); Craignethan Castle; Holyroodhouse (where the blood stain of Rizzio still can’t be washed away…); Bolton Castle; Turret Castle; and the Talbot Hotel in Oundle, which houses the staircase from the demolished Fotheringhay Castle, which she walked down to her execution. It makes me tired just thinking about how much energy all this haunting must take! (But her birthplace at Linlithgow Castle is only haunted by her mother, Marie of Guise)
Castle Rising was built in the 12th century, and for a time (1330-1358) was the home/prison of Queen Isabella, “the She-Wolf” of France. Isabella was the wife of Edward II, and it was said she and her lover Roger Mortimer had the king murdered, and her son then imprisoned her at Castle Rising. It wasn’t quite as dour as that–she lived in her accustomed royal luxury with a full household, but it was said she descended into dementia as she aged and spent her last troubled years locked in the upper story rooms. She died in August 1358, and then came back to the castle. Visitors have reported hearing her shrieking and laughing on the top floor, and residents in the nearby village say they can hear her screams and laughter at night as well.
Moving ahead to the Regency, George IV is said to be haunting his Pavilion in Brighton, the place he loved so much he just couldn’t leave it. In Richard Jones’s Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland, “It is said that his ghost can still be seen walking the underground passages that link the Pavilion to the Dome. This building at the time was the Royal stables and is now used as a concert and exhibition center. He has also been seen in the tunnel linking the old cellars to the nearby pub the Druid’s Head…” (I think Diane and I actually ate at the Druid’s Head on the Splendors of the Regency tour, at those tables outside with some other friends! If I’d known Prinny was hanging around I would have shared my fish and chips with him)
Ham House in Richmond is rumored to be haunted by Elizabeth, the Duchess of Lauderdale, who taps her cane along the floors. It’s also strangely haunted by one of Charles II’s spaniels…
Speaking of Charles II, Nell Gywn is said to haunt Salisbury Hall and also the Gargoyle Club on Dean Street, where her house once stood (her presence is signaled by a strong scent of gardenias and a glimpse of a gray, shadowy figure)
At Byron’s family home of Newstead Abbey, there’s said to be another canine spirit, that of the poet’s Newfoundland Boatswain, who is buried on the estate under an elaborate monument. This is the verse on his obelisk: “NEAR this spot/Are deposited the Remains/of one/Who possessed Beauty/Without Vanity/Strength without Insolence/Courage without Ferocity/And all the Virtues of Man/Without his Vices/This Praise, which could be unmeaning flattery/If inscribed over Human Ashes/Is but a just tribute to the Memory of/”Boatswain” a Dog/Who was born at Newfoundland/May 1803/And died at Newstead Abbey/Nov. 18 1808″
Hall Place, whose earliest sections date to the 14th century, is haunted by the Black Prince (1330-1376), who is said to have courted his wife Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, there and appears in his dark armor as a harbinger of bad fortune. In the Evening Post of November 29, 1924, an article appeared that declared “Black Prince’s Ghost Said to Have Warned Britain”. Lady Limerick says in this article, “The last time I saw the ghost was on a Sunday evening. The figure was standing by the fireplace in the morning room, and when I went into the room with a friend it glided away through the window into the garden…Sometimes there have been faint sounds of music.”
One weird little story I came across says that in the 1830s, when Wellington was Prime Minister and quite unpopular for his opposition to the Reform Bill, the ghost of Cromwell appeared to him at Apsley House and warned him to let the Bill through Parliament. The Bill passed in 1832. Why Cromwell thought to bother himself with it I don’t know.
These are a lot of ghosts, but they are just the tip of the spirit iceberg! Now it’s your turn. If you could meet the ghost of anyone at all, and actually have a coherent (non-scary) conversation with them, who would you choose? What would you ask them? And which of these ghosts would make the best Halloween costume???
I remember seeing the term “pinchbeck” in Georgette Heyer novel and wondered what it meant. It turns out it’s an alloy of copper and zinc invented by Christopher Pinchbeck (1670-1732) and used extensively to make durable jewelry that was less expensive than gold. The earrings to the left are gold, to the right, pinchbeck, both early 19th century. I think both are very pretty! One could wear these to a ball, with a pretty white gown if one were young, or with more vibrant colors if older (I love gold with green). 
The term “paste” used to make me think of plastic (ugh!) but it actually refers to cut leaded glass faceted to resemble real gemstones. Being softer, it was trickier to cut. And some of it is very pretty as well. Here I have several sets of earrings, diamonds above, paste below. Frankly, I cannot tell the difference! Any of them would be just the thing for a night with my lover at the opera. 
The term “parure” refers to a set of matching jewelry. The first is amethyst, the other is emerald-colored paste. I think these parures would be great for a presentation at court. Since the combination of high waists and hoop skirts couldn’t flatter any figure, pretty trinkets like this would help to bring the eye toward the face, instead. 
