Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

“Engaging Oldfield”

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I am deep in finishing up a book due Oct. 31 (the first in my Elizabethan mystery series! I’m soooo excited about it), but first a little Tuesday business. The winner of Love and Louis XIV is…Elizabeth Mahon! Check your email inbox for more info…

And in looking around for a blog topic today, I found out that Georgian actress Anne Oldfield died on this day in 1730. I’m a huge theater buff, and love to collect books about the history of the theater/opera/ballet, so I sorted through my shelves until I found Joanne Lafler’s The Celebrated Mrs. Oldfield: The Life and Art of an Augustan Actress.

Anne Oldfield was born in London in 1683, the daughter of a poor soldier. She was apprenticed to a seamstress, but she loved reciting poetry and plays, and one day was overheard (it was said in a tavern!) by theater impresario George Farquhar, who was impressed with her beauty and her speaking voice. She then found herself engaged at Drury Theater and was an instant hit, at first for her looks more than any acting ability, but as the years passed she honed her craft and became renowned as a great comic actress.

Some of her most famous roles were in plays by Ben Jonson (Volpone and Epicoene) and Colley Cibber (The Careless Husband, The Provok’d Husband), who declared she “here she outdid her usual Outdoing.”

She was one of the great theatrical idols of her day, renowned for her talent and her ladylike behavior, her clothes and hats copied, her plays sold-out. Alexander Pope, in Sober Advice from Horace, said, “Engaging Oldfield, who, with grace and ease, Could join the arts to ruin and to please.”

She died at 47 at her fine house at 60 Grosvenor Street in London, leaving her rather large fortune to her two sons. She was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Who would you love to go back in time and see onstage???

Posted in Research | Tagged Anne Oldfield, theater | 5 Replies

Inglorious October 25

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Good morning/afternoon everyone. I’m recycling a blog post from October 25, 2007 today, the anniversary of two major battles, neither of which have anything to do with the Regency period.

In 1415, Henry V won the Battle of Agincourt, one of the attempts by England to get a foothold in France (and am I the only person who prefers the Olivier version over the Branagh film?).

And in 1854, thanks to bungled orders, political infighting among officers, and the famed stiff upper lip, the Charge of the Light Brigade took place, when the 13th Hussars charged directly into enemy guns during the Crimean War. As a French general commented, “C’est magnifique mais ce ne pas la guerre.” (Roughly translated as: it’s magnificent, but not war. Well, it sounds better in French.)

I’d hazard a guess that we remember these events by the two poets who immortalized them rather by the history. Here’s an excerpt from the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech by Shakespeare:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Tennyson, another master of the soundbite, immortalized the Charge of the Light Brigade, a peom that, if you are an English person of a certain age, you had drummed into you at school, or at least the more quotable bits of it:

Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

I wonder if we would remember these two events–the English tried for a couple more centuries to claim bits of France, but failed; and the famous Charge was a tactical blunder of monumental stupidity–if it weren’t for the poets.

And a reminder that the contest to win one of my books about Jane Austen as a vampire is still open at Dark Jane Austen. Now I must go and write. What are you up to today?

Posted in Research | Tagged poetry, Shakespeare, Tennyson | 2 Replies

Hurricane

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Today in the mid-atlantic states and the northeast we will be having a hurricane. Not just any old hurricane, but a storm such as has never been seen before. It looks like New Jersey and New York city will be hardest hit. The Washington D.C. area where I live will be on the outskirts of the storm, but, even so, the federal government is closed, the subway and bus lines will not run, schools are closed and we’ve been warned for two days to be prepared.

I’ve been to the grocery store twice and purchased all the essentials. Toilet paper. Cat food. Kitty litter….and food and drink for the people in the household. If we have electricity, I’ll let you know how we are faring during the day. If not, I’ll be back when I can.

Meanwhile, here’s a snippet about a hurricane in England, March 23, 1822.

And one from October 18, 1812, and another from October 19 and 20 that same year.

If you are in the storm’s path, I wish you good luck. Stay safe.
Any advice for weathering a storm? What should I read, if I need to read by candlelight?

Posted in Research | Tagged hurricane | 10 Replies

Memories of Bath

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Janet Mullany

OK, I’m cheating a bit because despite having power all through the storm I spent it lounging around blissfully reading and baking and eating the products of the baking. Now everything has caught up with me, so I’m recycling a post in which I talk about the city of Bath and my late aunts Phyl and Nell who introduced me to Heyer and who shared my love of reading and Austen.

They were born about a century ago in London, the older sisters of my father. Their parents were of Irish descent, their mother (my g-grandmother) was in service according to the 1901, census and their father a maker of brass musical instruments. Neither of my aunts married. They shared houses and when I was a child we visited them in their wonderful house in Bath, on Lansdown Place West. This may be their house, I can’t read the house number.

Lansdown Place West is the continuation of Lansdown Crescent, one of the most beautiful pieces of Georgian architecture in the city, constructed between 1789 and 1793 and designed by architect John Palmer. It’s higher than the more famous Royal Crescent, with an amazing view of the city.

In front of Lansdown Crescent is a field still used for grazing, one of the original design features of the Royal Crescent (and possibly other places too)–the idea being that you’d have the pleasures of the town with the healthful idyll of country life.

The only (so far as I know) famous, or infamous, occupant of Lansdown Crescent was William Beckford who lived at number 19 and 20 (the ones with the imposing frontage). The houses have four floors, servants’ quarters in the basement, and mews behind the Crescent.

My aunts showed me the city of Bath. They took me to tea at the Pump Room and Sally Lunn’s, boat rides on the river, tours of the Roman Baths, and walks around the city. There was a shop, now moved to a different location in the Guildhall, Gillards of Bath, which was very little changed from Victorian times. Loose tea, stored in massive metal containers, was measured on scales, tipped onto a sheet of brown paper, and folded into a miraculous neat cube, tied with string.

Their house on Lansdown Place West became too much for them–all those stairs and continual maintenance, so they moved to an early eighteenth-century house in Batheaston (lots of stairs and continual maintenance) a few miles east of the city. Again, this may or may not be their house but it’s very close!

My aunts loved Heyer, Austen and Georgian/Regency architecture, fashions, and furniture long before they became popular, and picked up antiques for a song at jumble sales. They taught me it’s possible to fall in love with a place and I certainly fell in love with Bath, thanks to them. They even suggested I write, although at the time I thought it was a weird idea. A few years ago I met with a psychic who told me she saw them behind my shoulder and they were both very proud of my writing, although Nell (it must have been Nell!) was quite upset at what I’d done to Jane Austen (not to mention the sex!)

I’m so grateful for what they gave me.

Who were your mentors for writing or any other passion? And have you ever had a session with a psychic that unearthed something interesting?

Posted in Reading, Research, Writing | Tagged bath, psychic | 2 Replies

Belated Happy Halloween!

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Elena Greene

Besides anxiety about Sandy, Halloween has obsessed me for much of this week. This past weekend I helped to run a Halloween Party for my UU church, complete with a Haunted House put on by some of the older youth including one of my daughters, who played her role to creepy perfection.

While waiting for Sandy to hit, we finished carving our pumpkins in accordance with this year’s theme, Lord of the Rings. (My daughters dressed up as Elven maidens in medieval-style gowns and their ever-useful Vulcan ears.) Here’s my pumpkin, carved with the head of a Balrog, the fire demon that the wizard Gandalf battles in the mines of Moria.

Carving vegetables into scary shapes was already a custom during the Regency, although potatoes and turnips were often used. If you want to learn more, check out my post about Jack-o-Lanterns from a few years ago.

We were fortunate enough not to lose power, so I was able to toast the pumpkin seeds the next day. This year, we experimented with a Mexican-inspired version. They were quite yummy. Those that I didn’t spill on the kitchen floor while transferring from pan to storage container, that is!

Here’s my recipe should you care to try it:

Ingredients: pumpkin seeds, olive oil, chili powder, cumin, salt.

Rinse pumpkin seeds. Remove all pulp. Drain and spread on a cookie sheet to dry overnight.

Preheat oven to 250F. Line baking sheet with foil.

Toss pumpkin seeds in enough olive oil, salt, cumin and chili powder (about twice as much chili powder as the cumin) to lightly coat them.

Bake for about 1 hour, tossing every 15 minutes, until golden brown.

Cool. Store in airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 months.

Lastly, I was browsing around Youtube and found this clip of Northanger Abbey as if it really were a Gothic horror novel.

I hope you all enjoyed or will enjoy your Halloween, if you live in an area where it has been rescheduled. I think it’s important for the children (all of us, really) to maintain fun traditions even during scary, troubling times.