Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

One of my favorite places–William Herschel Museum, Bath

Updated on January 13, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I find a lot of people don’t know about this museum in Bath, so naturally whenever I get the opportunity I spread the word. It’s the home of the astronomer William Herschel, and where he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 (I mean, through a telescope. He didn’t find a major planet lying around among the old newspapers, which is the sort of thing, on a less celestial scale, that happens in my house). Herschel’s story is fascinating. He was a refugee from Hanover and a musician (you can buy recordings of his works), and traveled around England for a time as an itinerant music teacher before settling in Bath. There, one of his pupils paid him with a telescope, and he figured out he could make a better one. So he did. His sister Caroline joined him in England and was also an astronomer, and after the discovery of Uranus many famous names flocked to his observatory at 19 New King St. Eventually King George III invited him to move near Windsor to continue his work there.
The house is gorgeous and intimate–on a much smaller and modest scale than the houses of the Royal Crescent, for instance, and beautifully restored (I kidnapped a pic of the music room–note the “wall to wall” carpeting–actually long strips of carpet, and the intricate wallpaper) and full of Herschel’s books, furniture, and telescopes. His laboratory still features the cracked flagstones from a mishap of 1781. There’s also a charming garden, with a replica of his telescope.
I only discovered this museum the last time I visited Bath and I’ve been in love with it ever since.
Anyone else care to share their favorite place?
Janet

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged astronomy, bath, Caroline Herschel, William Herschel, William Herschel Museum | 13 Replies

Luddites and Labor Day

Updated on January 11, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

Today the USA celebrates Labor Day, a national holiday that celebrates the American worker.

In the late 1800s several states celebrated Labor Day, but it was only after a number of workers were killed by U.S. military and U.S. marshals during a Pullman Strike, that congress made Labor Day a national holiday.

Worker unrest was not unusual during the Regency, of course. I’ll bet you’ve come across mention of the Luddites more than once when reading Regency-set historicals.

The Luddites were also protesting workers. They were English textile craftsman who protested by destroying the mechanized looms that were operated in factories by unskilled workers. Their name came from a young apprentice loom worker named Ludd or Ludham, who, when chastised by his superior, smashed his stocking frame with a hammer. Twenty-two years later, in 1811, Ned Ludd or Captain Ludd, or King Ludd, appeared in Nottingham, the leader of a protest. Soon he was reported to be on the move from one industrial center to the next, inspiring protesters, drilling secret armies at night, his face ghostly white, carrying a pike in his hand.

Problem was, Ned Ludd was a fiction. He was not a real person at all but a symbol. The officials believed in him; a militiaman reported actually seeing him.

Besides having a fictional leader, the Luddites poked fun by producing officious-sounding dispatches. They invoked the name of Robin Hood in their quest for social justice. They also marched as “General Ludd’s wives”wearing women’s clothing.

The Luddites, though, were serious about their protests. Unlike how their name is used today, their complaints were not that the mill owners were replacing hand looms with more more advanced technology. The Luddites wanted those advanced machines to be run by skilled workers earning a fair wage, not unskilled, low-paid workers producing shoddy goods.

With some exceptions–the killing of a mill owner, for one–the Luddites confined their protests to damaging looms. Far more violence was inflicted upon the Luddites than they caused. Several were hanged, however, and more were transported to Australia. The last protest was in 1816.

Today when you are watching your parade or eating your hot dog, remember the Luddites and drink a toast to Ned Ludd!

What’s your favorite Labor Day activity?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged Luddites | 5 Replies

The Lady Who Broke The Rules!

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

The Riskies welcome back Marguerite Kaye, who is here to talk about her new release, the third in the “Castonbury Park” series from Harlequin Historicals….

Slave to Love! And a Giveaway

The Lady Who Broke the Rules is my book from the Regency upstairs/downstairs series Castonbury Park. My heroine is Lady Kate, the eldest daughter of the wealthy Montague family, a philanthropist and abolitionist. My hero is Virgil Jackson, a freed slave.

The Riskies welcome back Marguerite Kaye, who is here to talk about her new release, the third in the “Castonbury Park” series from Harlequin Historicals….

‘We want scandal, scandal, scandal,’ our editor told us eight authors when we first embarked on the ‘Castonbury Park’ journey, and a freed black slave seemed to me like a brilliant starting point. Any man who could survive the horrors of slavery and succeed on his own terms as Virgil does would have to be unbelievably strong-willed, yet at the same time, coming from such a traumatic background, he had to have some deep-seated issues of his own to contend with. Virgil is a free man, but he’s still a slave to his past

The history of slavery is a complex, emotive and controversial subject, one that has always fascinated me, but I have to admit there where times when I thought I’d taken a step too far in making a freed slave a romantic hero. However, with the Castonbury Park series is set at a time when slavery was being challenged in both the Old and the New Worlds, I’m always keen to push boundaries in my stories, so I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.

The Lady Who Broke the Rules is set in 1816. In the United States, the trade of slaves was abolished in the north in 1804, after which manumission in those states gathered momentum. In the south though, cotton was in increasing demand (paradoxically thanks to the north’s industrialisation of textile manufacture), slaves were a hugely important part of the economy, and resistance to abolition was significant.

Virgil was born into slavery in the south and freed in the north. He was one of the fortunate ones who came to true eminence and used his wealth to give others the chances he had had to make for himself. Though in reality this kind of success was rare, it was not unheard of. Robert Purvis is just one example of the black philanthropists from whom I took inspiration for Virgil, but his entrepreneurial side is an amalgamation of a whole number of black men and women who flourished in Nineteenth Century Boston, renting out real estate, setting up restaurants and beauty parlours, making shoes and clothes for the mass market, taking on the Establishment by training as lawyers and doctors.

Across the pond, a huge number of aristocratic families had derived a large part of their wealth from plantations in the West Indies which relied on slavery, but their influence was on the decline. The actual trade of slaves became illegal in 1807, and although it was not until 1833 that slavery itself was abolished, by 1816 the growing Abolitionist movement, coupled with the decline of the economic significance of the West Indies plantations, made the idea, if not the reality, of slavery much less politically and socially acceptable than it had been a decade or so before.

My research for The Lady Who Broke the Rules taught me that a large number of the British abolitionists were women, and so I made my heroine, Lady Kate Montague, one of them. It was one of the few political causes in which it became acceptable for women to participate, and in which women took a leading and influential role. I relished the opportunity to create a heroine who could, without it seeming a historical anachronism, be active politically and philanthropically. Josiah Wedgewood’s daughter Sarah, who introduces Kate to Virgil, was just one real life example I drew on when writing her.

There’s a huge difference between perception and reality. Kate, like me, had only read about slavery. Virgil had experienced it. As a writer, I had to try and imagine myself in both sets of shoes. Whether I’ve managed it or not – well, that’s for you to decide.

I have a signed copy of Kate and Virgil’s story to give away. Just leave a comment for a chance to win.

The Lady Who Broke the Rules (Castonbury Park 3) is out in October in the UK, digital only in the US and Canada, though it will be released in a print duo (Ladies of Disrepute) with Book 4 in December. Here is the blurb:

‘Your rebellion has not gone unnoticed…’ Anticipating her wedding vows and then breaking off the engagement has left Kate Montague’s social status in tatters. She hides her hurt at her family’s disapproval behind a resolutely optimistic facade, but one thing really grates…For a fallen woman, she knows shockingly little about passion! Could Virgil Jackson be the man to teach her? A freed slave turned successful businessman, his striking good looks and lethally restrained power throw normally composed Kate into a tailspin! She’s already scandalised society, but succumbing to her craving for Virgil would be the most outrageous thing Kate’s done by far…

There’s excerpts, background and more about my books on www.margueritekaye.com.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Regency, Research | Tagged Castonbury Park, Marguerite Kaye, Slavery in the Regency | 7 Replies

The Riskies Welcome Ann Lethbridge!

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

Sexy French Chefs, Naughty Women, and Food

~ by Ann Lethbridge ( http://www.annlethbridge.com)

Lady of Shame is # four in the eight part Castonbury Park Series. Available in print in the UK now, and as e-book in North America, it is also coming out in print, in a duo with book three, in January 2013, with HQN titled Ladies of Disrepute. I must say I am loving these titles, and I just had to take a picture of the whole series, they look so lovely on my bookshelf.

I have always been fascinated by the kitchens in the stately homes I have visited over the years, so I the idea of having a sexy French chef as my hero was as irresistible as a chocolate soufflé.

As was the thought of the scandal if one of the ladies of the house should be tempted by a lowly, if handsome and charming, chef. And just think of the problems a trouble in the kitchen would cause for the same lady who was trying to woo a new husband. After all the way to a man’s heart is supposedly through his stomach.

Part of my fascination with kitchens and cooking at this time stems from the changes occurring during Regency. The move forward into our modern world. The mass production of iron and copper goods made it possible for chefs to stock their domains with every size and shape of saucepan and novel gadget. There were other innovations too, such as the use of metal grates and hobs which made boiling and stewing faster and easier. Easier is a relative term, of course. Today it would all sound like terribly hard work.

Also at the end of the Napoleonic wars, British nobility once more embraced everything French from fashions to food. There was an influx of French chefs, including the great Carême himself, once chef to Napoleon Bonaparte who came to work for the Prince Regent.

Menus in this age of excess were not about eating. They were about theatre and taste and extravagance. I quickly discovered in my research – warning the following may not be for those with weak stomach and you may want to skip ahead – that many of the foods eaten in the Regency are never seen on tables today. At least not on mine. Such things as cockscombs (wattles), cocks-stones (you can take a guess at what that is I am sure), eels, lamb brains and calves udders, to name but a few, were considered delicacies. Um none of those show up in my book you will be happy to hear.

A dinner at a nobleman`s house would be designed to show his wealth and prestige. For example, an intimate dinner for four people would have at a minimum a first course of eight dishes and a second course of nine dishes, followed by a dessert course of four or five dishes. Each course would be put on the table in large serving dishes all at once in perfect symmetry, in a pleasing balance to the eye. Guests would pass the platters nearest to them to those that requested them. The gentlemen would carve the roasts for the ladies.

Here is a sample menu of the first course for one such small intimate dinner designed by Louis Eustache Ude, Ci Devant Cook to Louis XVI and the Earl of Sefton. The cook book then goes on to give the recipes, or receipts as they were called, and if you are interested you can find them on line.

Soup Course

Soupe printannier, or spring soup

Crimp cod and oyster sauce

Two Removes

Foul àla Montmorenci, garnished with a ragout à l`Allemande

Ham glazed with Espangnole

Four Entrées

Fricassée of chicken with mushrooms

Lamb chops sauté with aspargust, peas, etc.

Fillets of fat chicken, sauté au supreme

Petits pâtés of fillet of fowl a la béchamelle

And that is just the first course. If you are wondering about the term “ removes “ These are the dishes put on the table while the staff clear away the soup, so you are not left sitting with nothing to eat before the entrées arrive.

I used this book and others to create my menus for the story, but sadly to my hero’s chagrin all does not go well with the meals.

Here is a short excerpt:

Claire watched him from the corner of her eye, looking forward to the same reaction of pleasure and delight that had accompanied the first course. As hostess of the dinner, the credit would fall to her as well as the Duke’s famous French chef.

Dyer masticated with evident pleasure, then his face turned red, he gazed wildly around and then lifted the table cloth and spat the contents of his mouth into its folds.

Everyone at the table stared at him in astonishment, too polite to say anything, but clearly revolted by the sight.

Mr Dyer’s face turned purple. He grabbed up his wine glass and gulped its contents, while fanning his hand in front of his face.

“Mr Dyer,” Claire said. “Are you all right? Did you swallow a fishbone?” There should not have been any in this dish. This she had agreed with Andre.

He coughed and spluttered and drank some more wine. “All right?” He choked out. “No, I am not all right.”

His mother patted his back. Miss Seagrove did the same thing from the other side.

Claire leapt up and poured him a goblet of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. The man seemed ready to expire.

Slowly the gasping and coughing subsided, though the man’s high forehead remained a deep red and beaded with sweat as he drew in one rasping breath after another.

Could he be suffering an apoplexy?

The Reverend Seagrove pulled the fish platter towards him. It was the only dish no one else had sampled. He spooned a small amount onto his plate and tasted it warily.

“Horseradish?” he said, with a wince. “Or too much pepper?”

Mr Dyer, with his bulging eyes and opening and closing mouth as he breathed heavily, looking a bit like the cod that was causing him such distress, shook his head.

Claire blinked. “Are you saying there is something wrong with the food, Reverend?” It wasn’t possible.

He pushed the dish towards her and she dipped her desert spoon into the sauce. She tasted it carefully just on the tip of her tongue and recoiled. It was like eating fire.

What a disaster.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but things go downhill from there….

Have you ever had a disaster of a meal? I have and will share mine, if you share yours. The best or rather, worst, story, wins a copy of The Gamekeeper’s Lady.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Research | Tagged Ann Letthbridge, Castonbury Park, Regency Dining | 11 Replies

Sarah Mallory Visits the Riskies!

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

Welcome to the blog debut visitor Sarah Mallory, author of #5 in the Castonbury Park series, “The Illegitimate Montague”!! Comment for the chance to win a copy…

Castonbury Village

We love to read (and of course to write) about the dukes and duchesses, the great and the good of old England, but for the Castonbury Park series we also took a look “below stairs”, at the people who worked in and around Castonbury Park and many of them would have lived in the village.

The country village of the Regency era was much more self-sufficient than it is today. Local farmers’ wifes produced butter and and eggs, which they would sell at the local market and most households would spin their own yard and knit stockings. A whole community would get together when it was time to kill a pig and everything would be done in one day, cutting up the meat, curing it and making the sausages etc. This was not the consumer society we know, but some things had to be brought in and fashion was beginning to make its mark.

For the Illegitimate Montague my heroine, Amber Hall is a clothier with a warehouse/shop in Castonbury and I have no doubt that she purchased at least some of her cloth from some of the many wholesale drapers in Manchester, which was only about 30 miles away.

There were no dress shops as such in the Regency: those wanting new clothes would buy their cloth from a clothier, or if they lived in London they would have access to more specialised silk warehouses. The clothes would then have to be made, either by the women of the house, or those rich enough would employ a dressmaker or modiste. They would most likely copy one of the fashion plates from the Ladies Magazine, or La Belle Assemblée.

Country families who rarely came to London could appoint the proprietor of a London coaching inn to act as their agent for shopping and other business, and the goods they ordered would be sent back to them on the mail coach – the very first “mail order”! Many provincial shopkeepers would travel by mail coach to London to buy goods from the wholesalers. In the early 1780’s Elizabeth Towsey (who, with her sister Susannah kept a milliners in Chester) travelled to London twice a year to select from the new season’s fashions. When the goods arrived, she put an advertisement in the local paper, inviting customer to come and inspect them. (Susannah later married a druggist, Mr Brown, and their son carried on the millinery business, which became a famous department store, Brown’s, in Chester).

Some families did not have a London agent, but would rely upon the county carriers, whose waggons travelled from the larger towns to appointed London inns – this was slower than the mail coach, but considerably cheaper, too.

Now, all the above would apply to the wealthier families, but for most of the villagers, new clothes were a rare occurrence. I found some fascinating snippets of information about country life in a book written by Anne Hughes, a farmer’s wife who lived at the end of the 18^th century (The Diary of a Farmer’s Wife, 1796-1797.)

Anne’s village was in Monmothshire, and probably a little more remote than Castonbury, but although she does a great deal of sewing and she talks of her mother-in-law knitting hose and her maid spinning yarn, the only mention of a new clothes is when her husband has been paid for his harvest and he buys her a new gown. Anne does not mention buying cloth or gowns for herself, although when she goes to market and sells her butter (for 7 pence a pound) she does buy a ribbon for her maid Sarah’s hair.

Clothes were passed down the social strata – the lord and lady of the manor passing on their unwanted garments to the villagers and farmers of the area – and no one is offended by this. When it is her husband John’s birthday, Anne says “…I did give him a pair of blue velvet britches, which my dear lady’s mother did give me in my parsell, and which pleased him mitilie, he liking the good small cloes to his leg covering.”

Anne also passed on some of her older clothes to her maid Sarah. When Anne and her husband are invited to the parsonage to drink tea, Sarah is invited too and doesn’t know what to wear …”so we up to my chamber where I did give her a purple velvitt out of my chest… It fitte her finely, so I did tell her to wear it with her warm cloke and nitted bonnitt.” In fact, it must have looked very good, because Sarah ended up marrying the parson!

When it is announced that Sarah is to be married, there is much talk of sewing sheets and linen for her chest, and Anne’s brother in law sends a package for Sarah, which contains “verrie fine linen for the making of sheets and damask for the tablecloths for her tables. And, as well, a verrie fine piece of white satin with a little blue flower upon it, and some fine lace for trimming.”

The satin was later used to make Sarah’s wedding gown “and it do look very nice, all trimmed with the fine lace and some at the sleeves and throat.”

However, before we think that village life in the Regency was a non-stop sunny idyll, there could be disagreements – Anne most definitely took against one Parson’s wife, a Mrs Ellis. She says that when they were walking to church together “Mistress Ellis…minsed along aside me prating of her new cloathes and that the gown she is waring cost so much, which I doe know is onlie her last yeres turned about and new bowes on for show. This I cappes by saying I will show her my new brockade which Jon bought me last market day….. After we had dined, I did take her to my sleepin chamber to showe off on her my best cloes; at seeing which, she begins to trump up about her new black sylk, which had cost so much and which I do know she did buy off Mary Ann, herself telling me so. Knowing this I could well afford to bring out my black sylk with the white spottes, what John did buy for me and which I had not put on. This did end her bounce so down again. It being two howers since she had fed, to tee drinken.”

And again, when Anne sees a “flighty piece in church” – “April ye 12 – We to church this evening….I did see Sarah Anne Plummer was there, tossing her head about, on which was a new bonnet, that I doubte be paid for: she being a shiftless body. I did also spot Mistress Jones….very high and mighty and aping the great lady, she wearing a verrie queer head covering, like a platter, albeit not so big, with great store of flowers upon it and ribbons adandering therefrom, in which she did look a sight to be sure. She did also wear a bright red gown of a cottony stuff, and not silk as I could see verrie well and she did throw off her cloak to show her finery, but la ’twas but trumperie stuff ….”

I do not know what Anne would have made of my heroine Amber’s warehouse – certainly Amber made sure her stock wasn’t “trumpery stuff” but I can imagine that the ladies of the village would have been vying with each other to look their best and more than one would have ribbons “a-dandering” from their bonnets!

Sarah Mallory

The Illegitimate Montague – #5 in the Castonbury Park Series