Author Archives: Janet Mullany

The Roar of the Greasepaint…

Updated on October 11, 2007 by Janet Mullany

… the smell of the crowd…and other things

Today is the birthday of Philip Astley (1770-1814), founder of the famed Astley’s Amphitheatre, one of the hot spots of Regency London. He’s now seen as the father of the modern circus, and in fact established the standard circus ring size of 42 ft. diameter.

He began his career in the army where he fought in the Seven Years War and distinguished himself with his horsemanship and then left to become a riding instructor and performer. He rejoined the army again in 1793 when England and France were at war, taking emergency leave when his Amphitheatre caught fire.

Tracy Chevalier has a terrific page on her site about Astley, who appears in Burning Bright, her novel about William Blake. And now it seems I’m going to talk about Burning Bright, which I enjoyed–sort of–I actually liked the circus stuff best, and admired the way she wrote about artisans. There’s a family who makes chairs and another character who makes Dorset buttons, something of which I was woefully ignorant; buttons were made of thread, woven together in intricate patterns, so all my characters whose buttons made a “pinging” sound as they hit the floor are about twenty years ahead of their time.

This illustration, of a Dorset basket weave, is one borrowed from the site of the British Button Society (yes, there is actually such a thing). What I didn’t get from the book is a clear sense of Blake and that was disappointing, but her depiction of Blake’s London was vivid and exciting.

There are any number of directions I could go from here, but I also wanted to add that I had a blast in NJ last weekend, signing as two people and giving readers the choice of the dirty book or the funny one; I finally got to meet Santa and a lot of other cool people; and Smartbitches are talking about Jane today.

So: have you been to the circus or read a good book recently?

Sign up for the Riskies newsletter at riskies@yahoo.com with NEWSLETTER in the subject line and learn to make buttons while standing one-footed on a horse!

It’s so difficult to get good help…

Updated on October 4, 2007 by Janet Mullany

Thanks to Naomi for the idea for today’s post. She wrote to us:

I have been reading a fabulous book by Alison Light who wrote about Virginia Woolf and her complex relationship with her servants (Mrs Woolf and the Servants). Virginia Woolf in her fiction and diaries thought and fumed about her difficulties with servants. She couldn’t live with them and she couldn’t do her work without them. If we assume that our beloved ‘historical romance’ heroines are reflective of our own idea of desired qualities then often they are written as being firm but fair employers, efficient and amiable house managers, and who often have some retainer or ex-nanny who is fiercely loyal and loved by her mistress and who loves her mistress like a daughter/mother/friend etc. These stereotypes are rather revealing in our own prejudice towards humane treatment of all regardless of their social standing, yet given how essential it was for the aristocracy to be seen to have servants to do the cleaning, cooking, heavy work, and the relative separation of the classes, exactly how much of the idea of good will between the classes is wishful thinking. I wonder if this is a line of enquiry that would be interesting to pursue for your readers?

Oh goodness, yes.

The truth was that for the Bloomsbury crowd, particularly after the first world war, their servants didn’t really want to be in the profession and had options elsewhere. Being a servant no longer had the prestige or the benefits of former times. And that’s exactly what the position was with servants/employers from the late eighteenth century through the Regency.

The Georgian servant population was mostly young (early 20s), transient, and planning and saving to get out of service. Visitors from abroad as well as employers complained bitterly about English servants’ rudeness, laziness, and greed.

Yet at the same time there was a fashion in the late eighteenth century for employers to commission portraits of servants–out of nostalgia for the “good old days,” maybe? There was a terrific exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London a few years ago that brought together many of these portraits, and the book of the exhibit is well worth having–many great illustrations and thoughtful essays.

Most of the portraits were painted by local artists (unless of course the servant was background for a portrait of the family) and many of them have a “primitive” quality to them. Here are a couple of some of the most famous of the genre from Erddig, one of the most popular National Trust properties in England because of its servant history.

To me, one of the most striking things about these portraits is that the servants don’t look happy. Maybe they were ill at ease. The estate carpenter in particular looks as though he wants the artist to just go away so he can get on with his work. The Yorkes, the masters of Erddig, regarded their servants with great affection, wrote some rather bad poetry about them, and created at least one sinecure position, cobweb duster, for an elderly employee.

One major clue about master-servant relations in the Regency-Georgian period is the appearance in print of warnings to servants not to ape their betters, to behave respectfully, and to dress appropriately–and that suggests that servants needed this advice. This is rather ironic since for many positions, including those of lady’s maid and valet, one of the “perks” of the position was the employer’s discarded clothes.

Would you want this saucy minx washing your undies? Quite honestly, she looks like a real trouble-maker.

Back to Naomi’s letter. Which writers can you think of who show “realistic” relationships between servants and their employers? And if you’re a writer, how do you portray servants?

If you’d like to see the Riskies write about a specific topic, email us at riskies@yahoo.com. We always like to hear from you!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Erddig, servants | 12 Replies

We have a Winner!

Updated on October 3, 2007 by Janet Mullany

Caffey, congratulations, you have won the signed copy of Forbidden Shores!
Please send your snailmail (and your full name!) to riskies@yahoo.com

Jane also wants to let you know she’s having another contest over at The Spiced Tea Party today and tomorrow and you’re all welcome!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged contest winner | 1 Reply

Conversation with Jane Lockwood

Updated on September 30, 2007 by Janet Mullany

Today we have as our Risky guest Jane Lockwood, whose first erotic historical, Forbidden Shores (Signet Eclipse), is released October 2. Your comment or question through Monday will enter you into a drawing for a signed copy of the book; the winner will be announced here on Tuesday.

Janet: Jane, welcome to the Riskies. I feel as though I know you already! Tell us about the book.

Jane: Forbidden Shores is about three people who each fall in love with the one person of the three who cannot love them back. I think I tend to see love as a catalyst, a powerful force that can be destructive as well as healing. Generally everything I write starts off with people who are quite happy as they are until they fall in love. Then they kick and scream as everything changes. It’s set against the background of the abolitionist movement and takes place mostly on a Caribbean island; Clarissa, the heroine, actually quotes from The Tempest at one point, and Hero #2 (March) is the enigmatic, powerful ruler of the island, a sort of Prospero figure. And if you were really going to explore the analogy, Allen, Hero #1, is Caliban. (Oh, and by the way, it’s much more explicit than the cover or back cover blurb suggests.)

Janet: What was your inspiration?

Jane: A brilliant book called Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild about the British abolitionist movement. Abolition was a hot, polarizing issue in Georgian England and full of conflict and sacrifice and passion, and I knew I wanted to write about abolitionists after I read it. I originally intended to set the book in England but my editor thought Quakers collecting signatures for petitions in the rain not nearly as sexy as sex on the beach of a Caribbean island.

Janet: So you had to deal with the issue of slavery in the book.

Jane: It was very painful and difficult to write about. Slaves working on sugar plantations were treated inhumanly and shamefully. I certainly didn’t want to go into lurid details, but I didn’t want to tone it down, and neither did I want to idealize the slaves who appear as secondary characters.

Janet: OK, let’s talk about something safer–sex. You have a menage a trois–was that difficult to write? And since there are so many erotic romances with menages, how did you make yours different, or dare I say, risky?

Jane: After diligent research–[unseemly snorts of laughter]–I didn’t want to make it too slick and multi-earth-moving. It’s part crazy lust but it also represents the desperation of all three not getting what they really want and knowing that this is as close as they can get. So there’s a fair amount of clumsiness and reluctance, but the heroine, whose idea it is, has the best time (my editor’s suggestion).

Janet: What’s the hardest thing about writing erotic romance?

Jane: I think you could have phrased that a little better. Really, finding other things for your characters to do; making them believable as people.

Janet: Is there any sort of sexual practice you’d feel uncomfortable writing about?

Jane: In this book, with its context, any sort of master/slave sex play. I guess I’m expected to say “no non-consensual sex” but I think once your characters are experimenting and exploring they may well do things they don’t want to do–or think they didn’t want to do.

Janet: Did you do any special research?

Jane: Not as much as I would have liked. For the sea voyage, I re-read a wonderful book by Eric Newby, The Last Grain Race, that gives an incredible portrait of life below decks on a sailing ship. Newby, who died last year, was the travel writer for the Observer in England, and in 1939 he sailed on a grain ship from Dublin to Australia on a ship that’s now a restaurant in Philadelphia, the Moshulu. I also re-read The Wide Sargasso Sea, a book I find unsatisfying because both voices are Jean Rhys’s (even though she has a wonderful voice). As well as some books on the history of the Caribbean, I found a couple of great websites: the Antigua & Barbuda Museum and Brycchan Carey’s Links and Web Resources for Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation. I visited Bristol, now my favorite English city, and its wonderful (free!) museums. And I borrowed the wording for a manumission from Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative.

Janet: What’s your favorite part of the book?

Jane: The chapter where Allen does his own laundry (a big no-no for a Georgian gentleman) and then climbs the mast of a ship (talk about phallic symbolism!).

Ask Jane questions about Forbidden Shores or writing erotic romance. I’ll make sure she’s here to answer them!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Abolitionists, Forbidden Shores, Jane Lockwood | 33 Replies

A Visit to Montpelier

Updated on September 27, 2007 by Janet Mullany

Last weekend I went to an amazing historic house in Virginia, Montpelier, the home of James Madison.

One reason I loved it so much was that the house is under major reconstruction. One notable owner of the house was the Dupont family, who bought it in 1900. The last Dupont to own the house left it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation with instructions that the house was to be restored to Madison’s time. This was a bit of a problem. The Duponts had converted the original 22-room house to a 55-room house (with real plumbing). So the trick was to get from this:

to this (illustration courtesy of Montpelier Foundation and PartSense Inc.):
and this is how things look from the outside at the moment:
Inside, I found it absolutely thrilling. The rooms are down to lathe and some original plaster as the house is restored to its former 1820s glory. Tiny fragments of original materials have been found (one amazing find was in a rodent’s nest, which had become a time capsule thanks to a scrap of paper with Madison’s handwriting, plus some fabric and wallpaper). Everything is being re-created as it was in Madison’s time, using historically-correct materials and tools. There’s a huge amount of documentation too, as Jefferson, Monroe and Madison were all building at the same time and exchanging letters and ideas.

The house is in a beautiful location at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, only two hours from Washington DC but it feels like another world. It also has beautiful grounds, with some trees dating from Madison’s time, including some cedars that were brought as a gift when Lafayette visited.

At one point we were standing in a room that frankly looked a mess–it was the original dining room, and our docent said something like “Imagine the greatest political conversations of all time when Lafayette, Jefferson, and Monroe visited Madison.” I got shivers down my spine.

You can see a blog of the restoration of Montpelier here.

Try and visit the house before restoration if you’re as fascinated by historic construction and restoration as I am. It’s due to open officially in about a year’s time. But the docent also told us that one room will be left in its current lathe-and-plaster condition for visitors to see how it looked before.

Do you have a favorite historic site? Tell us about it!

Enter to win copies of my books at longandshortreviews.com this week, and meet my dirty-minded alter ego Jane Lockwood this Sunday!