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Monthly Archives: April 2014

This weeks selection from my library shelves is Royal Poxes & Potions by Raymond Lamont-Brown. It gives us an interesting picture of Royal doctors from medieval times to the present day. Let’s take a look at our period. HRH George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales was (as we well know) a tad pudgy in adulthood.  In fact, we learn from this book, that an inclined plane was constructed on which Prinny was placed in a chair on rollers and moved to the platform which was then raised high enough to pass a horse under and let HRH gently down into the saddle.

220px-George_IV_van_het_Verenigd_Koninkrijk

George IV by Thomas Lawrence, 1816

During the period from 1787 to 1796, the Prince of Wales’s medical household included Sir Gilbert Blane, Richard Warren and Anthony Addington, later joined by Sir Walter Farquhar and John Latham. These doctors recorded not only the prince’s obesity and his craving for women and food, but the character traits of “vanity, extravagance, self-indulgence, and undependability.” Is anyone who has read a Regency Romance surprised by this? I think  not. As the Prince Regent’s “physician-extraodinary,” Blane records treating Prinny for a sprained ankle, incurred while teaching his daughter Charlotte how to dance the Highland Fling.  This could not have been an easy task for a man of Prinny’s girth and Blane recommended that he “curb his eating and keep more regular hours.” This advice was, naturally, ignored. Sir Astley Paston Cooper, who had studied medicine at London, Edinburgh, and Paris, was awarded a knighthood for successfully removing a sebaceous cyst from the Prince Regent’s scalp. Sir William Knighton appears to have been the physician most highly regarded by the prince and who became the King’s physician when Prinny became George IV. By 1822, he was also private secretary and keeper of the privy purse and one of the king’s closest confidantes. Those around the king attributed Knighton’s success largely to sycophancy. During a tour of Scotland, the king suffered from gout, the pain of which “no amount of cherry brandy succeeded in dulling.” Knighton treated him with a “mixture of flattery, laudanum (to which the king was addicted), bleeding and the potions of the day.”

462px-A-voluptuary

Caricature of George IV as Prince of Wales by James Gilray, 1792

The king had been seriously ill since the beginning of 1830. The royal physicians diagnosed “ascites (abdominal dropsy) and logged his difficulty in breathing, hiccups and bilious attacks.” He died on June 26, 1830 in extremely poor shape despite the attendance of at least ten royal physicians during the course of his adult life. The post-mortem, conducted by Sir Astley Paston Cooper, revealed that “His Majesty’s disorder was an extensive diseased organisation of the heart; this was the primary disorder, although dropsical symptoms subsequently supervened, and in fact there was a general breaking up of his Majesty’s constitution.” The report goes into quite a bit of detail which I’ll not inflict on you here. But, if you’re interested, it’s all in the book along with much information about the doctors of George the IV and the monarchs who preceded and succeeded him.

2014_Spring_Retreat_LargeI’ve been having the craziest month and it is my own fault. I probably shouldn’t have planned to travel for spring break, negotiate financial aid with colleges, plan a major church event and publish two titles in one month. My bad.

I did it all (not without some wear and tear) and I am here now, with four wonderful writing friends, loads of delicious food, chocolate and wine. In fact, I’m enjoying a nice Cabernet/Shiraz blend as I’m writing this.

I do have a serious goal for the weekend: to brainstorm new stories. I can write in short sessions, which is what I can mostly manage at home, but the extra time on retreat is helpful for characterization and plotting.

What is everyone else doing this weekend?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 4 Replies

Susanna’s blog post on Friday got me thinking about heroes. I, too, look for images of my heroes and I think the idea of looking at videos of actors is brilliant.

In 2006 I wrote a blog about Regency Heroes, where I pretty much gushed about my favorite type of Regency hero, the soldier, but there are other types which recur in Regency Historicals (including some I’ve written!)

Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress by Diane GastonSoldiers.These are my favorite Regency heroes, who, of course, fought in the Napoleonic War, especially at Waterloo. They have strength and bravery. They also have damage from the war, some way the war affected them emotionally, like we talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in soldiers today. Why should our soldiers be much different than Napoleonic War soldiers?

Dukes. Dukes in Regency romance, to me, are the “Harlequin Presents” heroes of their time. Harlequin Presents heroes are powerful, wealthy, commanding and seductive. They are used to having their own way–the quintessential Alpha hero. I haven’t written about a duke…yet.

Rakes. We must not forget rakes, those bad boys who have disreputable reputations, but who also have a keen sense of integrity that is all their own. These heroes are fun to write about, which I certainly did in my RITA winner, A Reputable Rake.

Corinthians. A Corinthian is a sporting man. In Regency romance he is the one who is a member of the Four-in-Hand club, meaning he drives his own carriages. He also might ride to hounds, spar with Gentleman Jack in the man’s boxing academy, or fence at Angelo’s fencing club in the same building.

Impoverished Lords. I didn’t know any other way to describe this hero. He has a title or is heir to one or is the younger son, and he lacks money to support his estate or to simply support himself or, in the case of The Mysterious Miss M, support the woman he loves. For the sake of people this hero cares about, he must contemplate stooping to desperate measures.

Of course, we often mix up our heroes, having impoverished lords who were soldiers, or dukes who are Corinthians. That’s part of the fun of it.

Can you think of any other Regency hero types? Which is your favorite?

Today’s visit to my library involves a new acquisition. Historic Streets and Squares by Melanie Backe-Hansen. This lovely and detailed book covers a variety of streets and square ranging from Scotland and the North of England, through the Midlands and South-West England, East Anglia, and Southern England to Wales and Ireland, with special attention paid to London. Today, I’d like to look at two of the London squares that will probably be familiar to most of you. The quotes and most of the illustrations are from the book.

Bedford Square from Horwood's 1799 Map

Bedford Square from Horwood’s 1799 Map

Bedford Square is unique as it was not only planned as in imposed uniform square, but it is the only Georgian square to survive in almost its complete original form. Built in 1775-83, it was the inspiration of John Russell, the 4th Duke of Bedford, who wanted to replicate the style and imposing design of the  Circus in Bath. The initial plans for a circus, evolved into a square.

Doorway - 25 Bedford Square

Doorway – 25 Bedford Square

Bedford Square is commonly accepted as the most complete and best preserved of all London’s Georgian Squares and was one of the first squares in London to impose an architectural uniformity around a central garden square. Bedford Square is architecturally significant because followed directly after the 1774 London Buildings Act, which regulated building construction. Eached terraced row appears as a complete palace-fronted facade, with stucco pedimented centres.

Hanover Square 1754

Hanover Square 1754

Moving along, let’s take a quick look at Hanover Square. Hanover Square and the accompanying George Street date back to 1713 when Richard Lumley, 1st Earl of Scarborough, signed a conveyance of 2 acres of freehold land.  The land originally belonged to Lord Harley, who married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle, who inherited the Marylebone estate. (Got that?) The lease with Scarborough covered an area south from today’s Oxford Street, encompassing the central square, along with two roads leading into from the east, two from the west, and one on the north, and the wider George Street on the south. Hanover Square was the first square in Mayfair, laid out from 1717 to 1719. Sir John Summerson called it the foundation stone of Mayfair.”

St. George's Hanover Square

St. George’s Hanover Square

Although not technically within Hanover Square, St. George’s Church (of Regency Romance renown) was a vital part of the layout. It was built by John James as part of the “Commission for Building Fifty New Churches,” which was put in place by Act of Parliament in 1711 during the reign of Queen Anne.  It was completed in 1724. St. George’s Hanover Square was the main parish church for Mayfair, so it was often the location for high-society weddings, a well as a few notorious ones.

I do recommend the book for lots of great detail on a quite a few historical squares. It’s a nice way to visit the past and fire the imagination.  Do you have some favorite ways to do that?

Posted in Regency, Research | 3 Replies

Susanna here, and so swamped under my current writing deadline for my 2015 historical romance, My Lady Defiant, that I don’t have time for any deep thoughts on the state of the romance genre or erudite discussion of my latest research discoveries. So instead I thought I’d share with you some of the inspiration that’s helping me see and hear my hero…

Everyone, say hello to Tom Hiddleston.

I could listen to him recite Shakespeare while selling cars all day:

And if that’s not enough for you, here he’s being Shakespearean on a horse:

And here he is teaching Cookie Monster about delayed gratification:

Frankly, this is the most I’ve ever focused on the actor I’d want to cast in the film adaptation of my book. I usually come up with an actor, an athlete or two who has the look I have in mind–I’m not that visual a thinker, so having an actual person to model a character upon helps me describe him or her better. Plus, when I’m filling out my cover art information sheet, I always like to include an image or two. If I describe Henry, my current hero, an elegantly handsome, leanly athletic, archetypically English blue-eyed dark blond, also linking to a nice Tom Hiddleston image shows my cover artist what all those adjectives and adverbs mean to me.

Yet this is the first time I’ve made a habit of watching an actor’s videos to help get me in the mood to write. Part of that is because the man in question is pretty yummy. Also, he has the right accent for the job, which couldn’t be said of Nathan Fillion (Will in The Sergeant’s Lady looks a lot like Firefly-era Fillion) or Cam Newton (my model for Elijah in A Dream Defiant’s brand of tall, dark, and athletic).

But I recently realized the main reason watching videos has helped me write Henry is that more than any other hero I’ve written, he spends his life playing a part. He was born with fairly severe dyslexia into a high-achieving, academically gifted family. So his life up until his book starts has been defined by his shame over what he considers his failure and stupidity, and he’s made an art form of avoiding any situation in which he might reasonably be expected to read aloud, write, or keep accounts. And then over the course of the book, he has to improvise even more than normal as he and the heroine spend most of the story running for their lives, pretending to be various people they aren’t to throw their pursuers off the scent. So imagining how a good actor might play my character helps me visualize how he plays himself, since he so rarely lets anyone see his whole truth.

What about you? Do you ever visualize actors or actresses playing the characters when you write or read?

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