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Author Archives: Diane Gaston

About Diane Gaston

Diane Gaston is the RITA award-winning author of Historical Romance for Harlequin Historical and Mills and Boon, with books that feature the darker side of the Regency. Formerly a mental health social worker, she is happiest now when deep in the psyches of soldiers, rakes and women who don’t always act like ladies.

Jane Austen’s Christmas…and Birthday…and a Prize!!!

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Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775. To commemorate her birthday, each year we devote the week to celebrating her life and the wonderful books that have endured and given us countless pleasure, much inspiration, and a love of the Regency.

This week, as we have done before, we are offering a prize to one lucky commenter, to be randomly selected from comments all week long. Comment every day! We’ll announce the winner by next Monday.
The winner will have the choice of either the annotated Pride and Prejudice or the new annotated Persuasion. These are beautiful editions!
Birthdays were not the grand occasions for celebration in Jane Austen’s time as in our own, but Christmas could very well be. Jane’s Christmases often meant having visitors, and, because travel was such a difficulty, guests stayed a long time.
Gifts at Christmas were often made by loving hands, things like monogramed handkerchiefs or needle cases. There were plenty of games, however. Cards and charades and games of chess.
There might also be theatricals. As a child, Jane Austen wrote a one-act play at Christmas, about a daughter traveling to get married.
Jane also attended balls at Christmastime and, in a letter to her sister Cassandra, wrote of one:

There were twenty dances, and I danced them all without any fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much, and with so much satisfaction as I did; from my slender enjoyment of the Ashford Balls (as assemblies for dancing) I had not thought myself equal to it, but in cold weather and with few couples I fancy I could just as well dance for a week together as for half an hour. My black cap was openly admired by Mrs Lefroy, and secretly, I imagine by everybody else in the room

I wonder if acknowledgement of her birthday became lost in all these festivities and visitors? If so, it is fitting that we stop and remember it here at Risky Regencies.
Do you, or anyone you know have a birthday close to Christmas? Is it celebrated as a birthday might be the rest of the year? Or are you or they short-changed?
Remember, one lucky commenter will be selected by next Monday for her choice of the annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion.
And don’t forget that the Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday contest is still going strong. See details here.
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Christmas Pudding or Omigosh I Missed Stir Up Sunday

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Stir Up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent begins, when, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the prayers begin:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Traditionally, the prayer read at Church was supposed to remind cooks that they should mix up their Christmas pudding.

This year Stir Up Sunday would have been on Nov 27, so I am a week late and my pudding will not be ready for Christmas.

To us Americans, pudding is some chocolate or vanilla or banana custard-like dessert, but English pudding is a mixture of lots of different ingredients, including some grain product.

In the Regency, meats such as beef or veal could be added to sugar, raisins, sherry, lemon, orange, prunes (the dried plums that give plum pudding its name), cinnamon, cloves, brown bread, and such unfamiliar (to me) ingredients as cochineal (a food dye made from insects), suet, sack (a wine from the Canary Isles), hock (another wine), and treacle (a sugar syrup).

Into the mixture was stirred a coin (for wealth), a ring (for marriage) and a thimble (for blessedness. Each member of the family stirred the mixture and made a wish. The mixture was then boiled in a cloth for hours, and hung on a hook to dry until Christmas.

On Christmas day, the pudding was covered with warm brandy and set aflame, making it a dramatic and exciting addition to the Christmas dinner.

If you would like to make a Christmas pudding for your Christmas the Regency way, you are too late, because it has to age to get the best effect and flavor. But never fear! Modern technology comes to the rescue:

And while you are waiting for your Christmas Pudding to be ready, you can play the Harlequin Historical Author’s Holiday Giveaway, based on the Advent calendar. We started a couple days after Stir Up Sunday and are going strong until Dec 23. Enter each day for chances to win daily prizes and for the most chances to win the grand prize of a Kindle Fire. If you’ve missed some days, go back and catch up. You’ll miss some prizes but not the grand prize.

What special “pudding” (aka dessert) do you make for the holiday season?

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Thanks for the Regency

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This is Thanksgiving week and a time to be thinking of all the things for which we are grateful. I’ve had many blessings in my life. Family and friends are chief among them. I thought it would be fun to look at some “Regency” things that make me grateful.

Thank you for…..

1. Jane Austen.
Without Jane and her wonderful books would this time period be thought of as a setting for romantic historical fiction?
2. Georgette Heyer.
Heyer made the time period come alive. For Jane, the Regency (or late Georgian era, to be specific) was contemporary and it would not have occurred to her to make it part of the appeal of her books. Heyer, writing later, embraced the era and made it come alive with great wit and cleverness.
3. The Drama.
The few short years of the Regency were filled with drama, the fodder of a novelist. With a mad king, a frivolous Prince Regent, social unrest, a war with Napoleon, and even dramatic weather (the year without a summer in 1816; the last Frost Fair in 1814), few eras could compete.

4. The People.
Think of all the larger than life figures who inhabited the Regency: The Duke of Wellington, still revered as a national hero (and by me… and Kristine Hughes). The Prince Regent, almost the polar opposite of Wellington. Lord Sidmouth, the force behind the repression of social protest, Lord Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary who, at the Congress of Vienna, brought peace and order to Europe and who tragically killed himself. Literary people, like Austen, naughty Byron, Shelley, Keats, Sir Walter Scott. Personalities like Harriette Wilson and Beau Brummell. The list goes on.

5. The Beauty.
Beautiful fashions for women, starting in the late Georgian era, stopping short of the excesses of the Victorian era. Beautiful settings – Country houses, Mayfair, the Pavilion in Brighton. Romantic modes of transportation – elegant carriages pulled by matched sets of horses, racy phaetons and gigs, riding horses, ships.
I’ll stop here, although, if I took a little more time, I could probably think of more. I am very thankful that I can “live” in the Regency every day in my writing. I’m thankful that my success has afforded me the ability to keep on writing Regency romance. I’m grateful for those wonderful, loyal readers who still love books set in the Regency. You’ll see more books from me!
Here’s something for which YOU can be grateful! The Harlequin Historical Authors are again hosting a Holiday Contest. In the spirit of an Advent Calendar, there will be daily prizes and a grand prize of a Kindle Fire! More on that next week….
In the meantime, what about the Regency are you most grateful for?
And Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
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Lord Mayor’s Show

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We missed it. The Lord Mayor’s Show!

Of course, I did not know of the Lord Mayor’s Show, I confess, so I wouldn’t have known I should have been in London this weekend to see it.
In 1215, King John granted a Charter to the people of London allowing them to elect their own mayor every year. He required the new Mayor to present himself and swear loyalty to the Crown. Each year the Mayor had to make the long journey up river from the City of London (the historic center of London that is now the financial district) to Winchester to pledge allegiance. The journey, made yearly for the last 785 years, barring plague and fire, war and insurrection, developed into a grand pageant that continues to this day.

In 1750, Canaletto painted the scene in exquisite detail.
I got to wondering what the parade would have been like in the Regency. The Belle Assemblee, 1811, gives a description:
Nov 9, being Lord Mayor’s Day, the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of the City of London appeared in their greatest state. The Lord Mayor, attended by several of the Livery Companies, took water in their respective barges, landed at Westminster, and proceeded first to the Exchequer, where the new Lord Mayor was sworn, before the Barons. Having been presented to the Judges in the other Courts, the Civic Body returned to dinner at in the following order of Procession. On the landing of the Lord Mayor at Blackfriars Bridge and so to Guildhall, Peace Officers cleared the way.
According to ancient custom:
The Royal West Regiment of London Militia of which the Lord Mayor is Colonel in field-day order 600 men
Court of Assistants of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, in their coaches;
The Banners of the Merchant Taylors Company;
Thirty seven Pensioners in the Livery of the Merchant Taylors Company carrying Spears and Shields, two and two
Three of the Lord Mayor’s Trumpeters on horseback.
Esquire in half armor with a lance; A Knight in a full Suit of Cap-a-Pee Steel Armor, on horseback; Esquire in half armor with a spear.
Ten Liverymen of the City of London, in their Gowns and Hoods;
Three more of the Lord Mayor’s Trumpeters on horseback;
Lance Esquire in half Armour; A Knight in a full Suit of Brass Armour, on horseback; Shield Esquire in half Armour;
The Lady Mayoress in her Coach and six Blood bay Horses;
The Lord Mayor’s Banners
His Lordship’s own Band of 21 Musicians in full Dress
Esquire in half Armour with a Lance; A Knight in full Cap-a-Pee Steel Armour, on horseback; Esquire in half Armour with a Spear;
Four Marshall Men on foot;
Six of the Lord Mayor’s Footmen in State Livery
The Upper City Marshal
The Lord Mayor State Coach and six Horses
The late Lord Mayor’s six Footmen in State Livery
The late Lord Mayor’s Coach and six Horses
The Alderman in their Coaches
The Sheriffs in the State Carriages

When the procession arrived at the Obelisk in Fleet Street, it was joined by the Judges, Nobility, Foreigners of Distinction, etc. At about five o’clock the cavalcade arrived in King-street. On entering Guildhall the Lord was greeted with loud and reiterated shouts
of applause.

After that, the Lord Mayor and guests partook of a lavish dinner followed by a ball.

But, alas, The Months of the Year, 1824, Mr. Constance laments:

The lord mayor’s show is now, I believe, considered to be the only stated exhibition in the metropolis that remains as a memorial of the great doings in the time of the pageants. It is now, however, but the mere shadow of what it was formerly. According to the accounts written at various periods, from the year 1575, we learn that the show then consisted of a far greater number of persons, banners, and decorations, than at the present time; and also that it was customary for the lord mayor and the nobility to stop three or four times between Blackfriars and Guildhall, to view the pageants, or plays, performed upon stages erected for the purpose.

Maybe next year I can go to London and see the parade for myself. If I do, I’ll be sure to let you know how it stacks up to the one in 1811!
What’s your favorite parade?
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