Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Barrett!

Updated on February 21, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

March 6 marks the birthday of one of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning! (in 1806, so she would be, er, 206…). It also seems appropriate for a romance writers blog, since she and Robert Browning had one of the great romances in literary history…

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall in County Durham, England, the eldest of the 12 children of Edward and Mary Barrett Moulton-Barrett (it seems like a good idea for her to just go by one of those Barretts…). The family’s fortune originated with family plantations in Jamaica, and were later reduced by a lawsuit and by the abolition of slavery in the UK. In 1809, after the birth of Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta, Edward bought Hope End in Herefordshire, and ideal place for raising a family. Elizabeth was educated at home, attending lessons with her brother’s tutor which gave her a firm foundation in languages and literature. By age 10, it was said she could recite Paradise Lost and various Shakespeare plays; her first poem was written at age 8, and by 12 she had written an “epic” poem of 4 books of rhyming couplets. At 14, her father paid for the publication of her Homeric-style poem The Battle of Marathon. During this time she was known as “a shy, intensely studious, precocious child, yet cheerful, affectionate, and lovable.” Her friend Mary Russell Mitford described her as “A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam.”

But by the age of 20, Elizabeth was felled by a mysterious illness, made worse by her use of morphine for the pain. In 1824, the London paper The Globe and Traveler printed her poem Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron, around the same time her father’s Jamaica property began to go downhill. In 1826, she published her first collection of poems, but by 1830 Hope End had to be sold and the family moved 3 times between 1832 and 1837 (first to Sidmouth in Devonshire, where they lived for 3 years, then to Gloucester Place in London, where she wrote more poems and articles). Finally they settled at 50 Wimpole Street, where a family friend, John Kenyon, introduced Elizabeth to the literary luminaries of the day, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Carlyle, and Mary Russell Mitford (who became her good friend, and helped her to publish more of her work).

In 1838, at her doctor’s advice, Elizabeth went to live for a time at Torquay along with her brother Edward. His death by drowning there in 1840 sent her into a terrible downward spiral, and she returned to Wimpole Street as an invalid and recluse, kept company mostly by her beloved spaniel Flush. She kept writing, though, and in 1844 two volumes were published, A Drama of Exile, a Vision of Poets and Lady Geraldine’s Courtship. These volumes made her one of the most popular writers of the time and inspired Robert Browning to write her a fan letter. Kenyon arranged for them to meet in May 1845, and thus began the most famous courtship in literary history.

She was six years his elder and an invalid, and it took some time for Robert to persuade her that his love was real. Her doubts were expressed beautifully in her most famous volume, Sonnets From the Portugese, which she wrote over the next several months. They finally eloped to the church of St. Marylebone and then ran off to Florence, with Elizabeth disinherited by her father (who did the same to all his children who dared marry!). But she had some money of her own, and they sold their poems for a comfortable life and happy marriage in Italy. Her health improved in the sunny weather, and in 1849, at age 43, she gave birth to their son Robert, always called Pen. Her writing went well, too. In 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, she was shortlisted for the position of poet laureate, but it went to Tennyson.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died on June 29, 1861 and was buried at the English Cemetery in Florence.

A few great sources on her life are:
Life of Elizabeth Browning, Glenn Everett (2002)
Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Julia Markus (1995)
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning: A Creative Partnership, Mary Sanders Pollock (2003)

Who are some of your favorite poets?? What are some romantic couples in history you like to read about?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Posted in Reading, Regency, Research | Tagged Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poetry | 4 Replies

Follies

Updated on February 18, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I was watching Downton Abbey last night (no spoilers- I know not everyone has seen the end yet) and after the episode there was a feature on Highclere Castle, the country house and estate that “play” Downton Abbey in the mini-series.

The house as it exists today was remodeled in 1839-42 in the style of the new Houses of Parliament so it did not exist in “our” Regency time, but, in the late 18th century the 1000 acre parkland was designed by Capability Brown and developed by the second Earl of Carnavon. At scenic points in the park the Earl placed follies to add to the beauty of the landscape.

Follies are extravagant buildings constructed just for show and for no other purpose. They were popular among the wealthy in the 18th century, often inspired by Roman and Greek ruins gentlemen had seen on their grand tour, but they could also mimic old English ruins, castles and towers and abbeys.

Follies

Neoclassical Temple Folly Highclere Castle Gardens

Gothic Temple Painshill Park

Abbey Painshill Park

Brizlee Tower

If you could have a folly, which one of these would you choose? Or would you prefer some other folly?

Remember there is still time to comment on Michelle Willingham’s Interview and earn a chance at one of four free books. I’ll select the winners at random after midnight tonight ET.

Posted in Regency, Research, Risky Regencies | 4 Replies

Another Visit to Montpelier

Updated on February 18, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Five years ago (yes, this blog has been going for that long and more) I blogged about visiting Montpelier, James Madison’s house in Virginia. Last weekend I finally got back to see the house in its restored glory. I was worried I wouldn’t like it as much as I did last time when it was a construction zone, down to lathe and plaster. I remember standing in the drawing room and feeling shivers down my spine when the docent said that Jefferson, Lafayette, and Madison had all been in this room together, and that analysis of nail holes gave them clues as to where Madison had hung his paintings. Now, with the room fully restored, and the paintings (or reproductions thereof) hung, it was the full reveal–beautifully done but lacking that leap of the imagination the room demanded in its unrestored state.

No pics allowed in the house, but I took a few of the outside. Here’s the view looking west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, barely visible on the horizon, the final frontier of the republic at that time.

When Lafayette visited he gave Madison a cedar seedling which grew into this magnificent tree, and one of Madison’s black walnuts survives next to it.

The garden created by the Dupont family, who were the last private owners of the house, is quite lovely, even when there’s not a whole lot in bloom. It’s full of bits and pieces they picked up in Europe (ah those were the days).

There’s a lot of interest now in the slaves who worked on Madison’s estate and excavations have revealed the buildings where they lived and worked. Here are the reconstructions of those buildings. One of their most famous slaves was Paul Jennings, who did the heavy lifting when Dolley Madison rescued the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington from the White House when the British invaded. He was also present at Madison’s death. His memoirs, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison are available on google.

The restoration is not yet complete. We saw a room full of odds and ends that may or may not have been owned by Madison. Madison didn’t mark his books, astonishingly, and when Dolley sold the house in 1844 to her son from an earlier marriage, he sold stuff right and left to pay off gambling debts. There was also a room where the original plaster/lathe was revealed and an exhibit of costumes worn by Eve Best as Dolley Madison in the PBS American Experience episode.

Tell me about your favorite historical sites or places you’d like to visit.

Posted in Research | Tagged Dolley Madison, Montpelier, Paul Jennings | 4 Replies

The Traffic of Women’s Hair

Updated on February 18, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Somewhere (here, perhaps?) recently I learned of a new-to-me website, Hillman’s Hyperlinked and Searchable Chambers’ Book of Days. What a treasure this is!

The Chambers’ Book of Days, 1869 version, is organized according to calendar days and offers tidbits of history associated with those days. The tidbits might be of events or biographies, and also includes important births and deaths on the date. But it also contains some less momentous historical incidents.

Here’s one from March 12, 1825, titled The Traffic of Women’s Hair:

As a rule, the women of England do not sell their hair. There is, however, in England, a large and regular demand for this article, to make those supposititious adornments which one sees in every hair-dresser’s window. It is stated that a hundred thousand pounds’ weight of human hair is required to supply the demand of the English market. It is mainly brought from the continent, where women of the humbler rank may be said to cherish their hair with a view to selling it for money. Light hair comes mostly from Belgium and Germany, dark from France and Italy. There is a Dutch company, the agents of which make annual visits to the towns and villages of Germany, buying the tresses of poor women.

In France the trade is mostly in the hands of agents, sent out by large firms at Paris. These agents, going chiefly to the Breton villages, take with them a supply of silks, laces, ribbons, haberdashery, and cheap jewellery, which they barter with the peasant women and girls for their tresses. Mr. Trollope, while travelling in Brittany, saw much of this singular hair-cropping going on; as the women in that province all wear close-fitting caps, the difference between the cropped and the uncropped was not so perceptible as it otherwise would have been. The general price is said to vary from about one franc to five francs for a head of hair half a pound to a pound in weight: but choice specimens occasionally command more than their weight in silver, owing to the eager competition of buyers to obtain them.

In England, something of this kind is going on in country villages, but not (it is supposed) to any great extent. A feeling of womanly pride rebels against it. Occasionally, however, evidence peeps out to show that poor Englishwomen know that there is a market for such a commodity. One instance of a ludicrous kind occurred at a metropolitan police-court some years ago.

On March 12^th, 1825, the court was thronged by a number of poor women, who seemed excited and uncomfortable, and who whispered among themselves as to who should be the spokeswoman to tell the tale which all evidently desired should be told. At length one of them, with a manner half ashamed, told the magistrate that one Thomas Rushton, a barber, called at her poor abode one day, and asked politely to look at her hair. Whether she guessed his errand, is not clear: but she took off her cap at his bidding. He professed to be in raptures with the beauty of her hair, and offered her a guinea for it. Being in straitened circumstances she accepted the offer. The rogue at once took out his scissors, and cut off the whole of her hair. ‘See, your worship,’ said she, ‘what he has done.’ His worship did see, and found that there were only little stumps of hair left like pig’s bristles. The fellow put her hair in his hat, put the hat on his head, and ran off without giving her a single coin. All the other women in the court had been defrauded of their tresses in a similar way, and probably all on the same day—for the rogue could not afford to wait until the exploit got wind. The poor women declared that they had been rendered quite miserable when they came to show their husbands their cropped heads—which may well be imagined.

It may be added that, about a hundred years ago, when false hair was perhaps more in use than it is now, a woman residing in a Scotch burgh used to get a guinea from time to time for her tresses, which were of a bright golden hue.

Being someone who has been traumatized more than once by a mere bad haircut, I can well imagine how these poor woman felt. To have your hair stolen must have been a very painful thing.

In 10th grade I remember telling a hairdresser that I wanted to grow out the layers in my hair. She took that to mean I wanted to match the shortest layer and I wound up with a haircut that resembled a little dutch boy. Oh, the trauma!!!!!! I had to send my sister onto the school bus ahead of me to warn my friends not to make fun of it.

What was your worst haircut?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged traffic in women's hair | 7 Replies

The Look Of Love

Updated on February 17, 2013 by Diane Gaston

I have a new “guilty pleasure” book for you. The Look Of Love: Eye Miniatures From The Skier Collection, the catalogue of the Birmingham (Alabama) Museum of Art’s exhibit of eye miniatures dating from the 1780s to the 1820s.

Jo Manning, author of My Lady Scandalous, the biography of famous courtesan Grace Elliot, and of many fine Regency romances, contributed fictional vignettes about certain eye miniatures, imagining the circumstances of the creations of the jeweled pieces of art. The addition of these vignettes to the catalogue seemed an inspired idea, because the identities of most of the subjects in the collection are unknown.

Apparently it was George IV, then Prince of Wales, who commissioned the first eye miniatures. When the Prince secretly married the Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, they exchanged miniatures of their eyes, painted on ivory and set in jewels, as tokens of their love. Soon it became the fashion for lovers and loved ones to bestow these tiny portraits of a single eye, made into brooches, pendants, even rings, on their favored ones. It was the perfect love token for clandestine lovers–one eye was enough to spark the memory of the person, but not enough for another person to identify whose eye it was.

Some eye miniatures were not secrets. They might be gifts between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, betrothed couples. Some were sad mementos of a loved one who died. But the identities of so many miniatures that were gifts from secret lovers are lost to us.

What remains are beautiful, sometimes spooky, images set in gold, surrounded by gems, or decorating tortoiseshell boxes. Some of the jewelry include woven locks of hair on the underside of the miniature. One includes the miniature of a hand; others, inscriptions such as “Esteem the giver.” One of the most unusual settings is a tiny image of an eye on a toothpick box. Another, in the book but not in the exhibit, is an eye painted onto a porcelain teacup.

These were gifts whose only purpose was to convey love. What an inspiration for romance writers and readers!

Read Jo Manning’s guest blog on the exhibition at Number One London.
Here’s an article on the exhibition from Vanity Fair.
More information on eye miniatures from Antiques Roadshow.
Preview of a scholarly article from Jstor.

I found an artist who will paint an eye portrait, but I think one of us (Amanda???) once found someone else who accepted commissions for eye miniatures.

Have you read (or written) about eye miniatures in any Regency Historicals?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged eye miniatures, george iv, Jo Manning | 9 Replies