Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

The Riskies Welcome Bronwyn Scott!

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

(January marks another entry in the Castonbury Park series…Bronwyn Scott’s Unbefitting a Lady! Bronwyn is visiting us this last weekend of the year to talk a little about the research behind the story of the horse-mad Lady Phaedra. Comment for the chance to win a copy!!)

As the Duke of Rothermere’s youngest daughter, Phaedra Montague is expected to be the dutiful darling of elegant society. Too bad, then, that this feisty Lady has swapped her dance cards and silk gowns for racing tips and breeches!

With the arrival of gorgeous groom Bram Basingstoke, Phaedra can’t help but be distracted. He’s as wild and untamed as the stallion he’s training. But Phaedra is supposed to act properly at all times. Even if this dark-haired devil in a billowing white shirt is tempting her to a very improper roll in the hay…

1817, a great year to be a horse!

Giles Worsley writes, “The stable was a setting to showcase the horse, a physical expression of the horse’s importance.” The stables were a world of its own within the estate. The concept of a stable included so much more than just a barn. It included outdoor training ovals (a left over innovation from the mid 1700s), a carriage house or carriage bays, outdoor paddocks, the stable block and the riding house (indoor riding arena, often complete with a viewing gallery). With that in mind, it made sense to set so much of Bram and Phaedra’s story, ‘Unbefitting a Lady,’ in the Castonbury stables. 1817 is an exciting year to be in the stables because many English horse enthusiasts are in the middle of a stable revolution. It’s a great time to be a horse! People are studying and learning how to harness architecture to make stables healthier places. 1790-1830 is a time of great stable modernization. There are lots of renovations being done regarding ventilation and health. Let me share two of those innovations with you; the iron hayrack and the loose box.

The iron hayracks hanging from the walls of the stalls: According to Giles Worsley in his book, “The British Stable,” hayracks were originally nothing more than wooden managers that ran the length of the aisles. These took up a great deal of space. Once iron became more accessible, iron hayracks could be fashioned and mounted in the stalls, freeing up space on the floors and they were more likely to withstand horses chewing on them, unlike the wood mangers. Iron hayracks were definitely starting to be in use in the more serious stables by 1817 and Kedleston, the estate we modeled Castonbury after did indeed use iron hayracks.

Moving towards the loose box : The loose box is the style of stall we’re most familiar with now in our barns. But before this, horses had a three sided stall with the aisle end open and they had to face the wall. Loose box stalls were used only for isolating horses who were ill. But the racing industry around the 1790s began to see the benefits a loose box stall would afford a horse in general. There are some early architectural designs in 1803 and 1810 that start to show the proliferation of loose box stalls for stables at Normanton and Tottenham Parks. By 1816, just a year before Phaedra’s story, the Ashridge stables in Hertfordshire were designed to incorporate a large number of loose boxes and by 1829, the loose box had become the norm. This is a transition that took about thirty years to catch on. Grooms felt leaving the horse loose in a stall caused too many problems.

Other improvements that took place between 1790 and 1830 include ventilation and lighting but we’ll save that for another time.

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Regency, Research | 8 Replies

The pugnacious cuckow

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Elena Greene

Last week was shoe-shopping; this week my activities were more nature-oriented: a hike (in more practical shoes) at the nearby Waterman Nature Center and reading my latest research find, A Selborne Year: ‘The Naturalist’s Journal’ for 1784. It’s one annual installment of the journal kept for 26 years by Gilbert White, curate, gardener and naturalist, who lived in Selborne, a village in Hampshire not far from where I am setting my current work-in-progress. The edition I own has lovely illustrations by Nichola Armstrong.

I like incorporating glimpses of nature and seasonal details into my writing. So A Selbourne Year is a positive treasure-trove. Here are some typical entries:

Apr 3. Rain. The ever-green trees are not injured, as about London. The crocus’s are full blown, & would make a fine show, if the sun would shine warm. (On this day a nightingale was heard at Bramshott!)

July 10. Grey, & pleasant. Gale, sun. The hops damaged by the hail begin to fill their poles. Thatched my hay-rick. Cherries very fine. Grapes begin to set: vine leaves turn brown. The young cuckow gets fledge; & grows bigger than it’s nest. It is very pugnacious. Cool.

This is just the sort of detail I love!

I find it interesting that Jane Austen had so little detail about the English countryside; perhaps she expected her audience to be too familiar with the subject to find it interesting. But it goes along with the general lack of descriptions in her books (we only know Elizabeth Bennett has “fine eyes” for instance, but her hair and eye color are left to the imagination). No matter; Austen’s characterization and dialogue are brilliant enough to stand on their own.

It is possible to go to the opposite extreme, I suppose. Friends and I were discussing Tolkien over beer (I love having friends with whom I can discuss Tolkien over beer!) and one said his descriptions of various imaginary settings went on too long. Those long descriptions always worked for me, though, because I like to visualize settings as I read. Tolkien’s description of Ithilien made me yearn to go there, although I would settle for the New Zealand film locations.

In my own writing, I try to strike a balance. I know too much description wearies some readers so I use it in service of the characters and the story. In my current mess-in-progress, the hero has spent much of his life in India and war-torn Spain and Portugal; a green and fertile England holds a special meaning for him. However, he may just enjoy hearing a bird sing; my heroine, the daughter of a naturalist much like Gilbert White, will know if it’s a lark or a thrush.

How much descriptive detail do you like in stories?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Jane Austen, Research, Writing | Tagged A Selborne Year, Gilbert White, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jane Austen, settings | 3 Replies

No More “Captain of the Men of Death”

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Diane Gaston

If you follow my Diane Gaston Blog, you will know that my father-in-law was hospitalized last week necessitating my quick trip to Williamsburg where the dh’s parents live. It turned out he had pneumonia and a flu virus, but they had feared he had one of those antibiotic resistent “superbugs.” Not the case, thank goodness.

After two days of hospital treatment, my father-in-law came home on antibiotics and was really in pretty good shape, up and around, alert, only a little slowed down physically. His illness made me wonder, though, what it might have been like if he’d lived in Regency times.

In 1918, Dr. William Osler, the father of modern medicine, called pneumonia the “captain of the men of death.” Indeed, it is now thought that a great portion of the 600,000 deaths in influenza pandemic of 1918 were due to bacterial pneumonia which took over after the flu virus compromised the immune system.

In Regency times, pneumonia was called “peripneumony”or inflammation of the lungs. It was treated with bleeding, at least until the patient was able to expectorate. After bleeding blisters were applied. Blistering was the practice of applying plasters to the skin with caustic substances that caused blisters. The blisters would pull the diseased humors from the body and then would be drained. Other treatments included enemas, sweating, and, probably most effective, concoctions that would promote coughing or “expectoration.”

I’m always appalled at how the treatments of illness in these early times seemed to put more strain on the body than would provide relief. (Although we now know bloodletting is an effective treatment for a few very specific conditions) Luckily today we have antibiotics and immunization to combat pneumonia so that it is no longer the “captain of the men of death.”

Have you come across any alarming treatments used during Regency times?

Stop by my website and see my newest bookcover – for Born to Scandal coming out December, 2012. Read a sneak peek.

Posted in Research | Tagged bloodletting, domestic medicine, pneumonia, Regency Medicine | 8 Replies

Monument

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

Today, of course, is September11. It seems impossible that 11 years have gone by since that day, which no one here will ever forget. As the building goes on for monuments in NYC and elsewhere, I thought I would take a quick look at another memorial built to commemorate a terrible event–the Great Fire monument in London.

The Great Fire started in a Pudding Lane bakeshop on September 2, 1666, and nearly wiped out the entire city (old, brittle, and built mostly of wood) before it was contained several days later. The Rebuilding Act of 1669 specified that some sort of memorial be built “the better to preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation.” It wasn’t until 1671 that the City Council approved a design, and 6 years before it was complete (plus another 2 before the inscription was finished!). The final cost was 13,450 pounds.

It’s a fluted Doric column of Portland stone topped with a crown of gilded flames at Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, 200 feet tall and 202 feet from the spot where the fire started (it’s said if the column topples that way it would land on the exact spot). It’s on the site of St. Margaret’s, Fish Street, the first church destroyed in the fire. The top is reached by a narrow winding staircase of 311 steps (a cage was added in the 1840s to prevent suicides). I am very claustrophobic, and have never tried this myself, but I hear the view is amazing!

The base is inscribed on 3 sides–the south describes the actions King Charles II took following the fire, the east how the monument was built and the mayors who oversaw it, the north how the fire started and was finally contained (a line about “Popish frenzy” was erased in 1830), and the west is a bas relief sculpture of Charles II and his brother the Duke of York, surrounded by Liberty, Architecture, and Science, directing the restoration of the city.

(For more info on the fire itself, look here…)

Have you ever seen this monument? What is the most moving/interesting/beautiful memorial you’ve seen??

Posted in Research | Tagged Great Fire, Monuments | 9 Replies

O say did you know

Updated on January 10, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Today’s the day in 1814 upon which poet Francis Scott Keyes composed The Star Spangled Banner which was adopted as our national anthem in 1931. He was inspired by witnessing the end of the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, where the British retreated after shelling the fort for over 24 hours, and, so the legend goes, as the smoke cleared, Keyes viewed the flag still in place.

Huzzah!

Keyes was visiting the British flagship the Tonnant, to negotiate for the release of one Dr. William Beanes who had been captured when the British invaded Washington. Letters from wounded British officers praising Beanes persuaded the British to release him, but they kept Keyes and his companions aboard ship, fearing they knew too much about the proposed invasion of Baltimore. Keyes, inspired, scribbled his poem on a scrap of paper and thus a legend was born.

Except … you must have noticed the words don’t quite fit. It’s difficult to sing, requiring you to squeak up tosome fairly high notes (most people have a range of about an octave and this requires a range of about an octave and a half). Keyes didn’t write the tune; instead he suggested that it should be sung to the tune of a 1776 drinking song called To Anacreon in Heaven, the theme song of the Anacreontic Society, a London drinking club. Anacreon, a 6th century BC poet, wrote extensively about women and wine. You can see more about the club and the text of the song at ColonialMusic.

I looked around for a version of the original on youtube and came up with this, which sounds historically correct tho there is no picture, the subtitles are odd and it sounds as though someone is splintering small pieces of wood during the recording (but don’t let that put you off). The song had a history of being recycled on this side of the Atlantic, with two earlier versions, Adams and Liberty–the Boston Patriotic Song and Jefferson and Liberty. It was a favorite of Keyes himself, who’d written another version in 1805, When the Warrior Returns, a tribute to Stephen Decatur.

If you’re in Baltimore or plan to visit, check out the Flag House (where the original star spangled banner that survived the battle was made) and Fort McHenry.

Also in a couple of weeks there’s a bombardment of books and authors at the Baltimore Book Festival takes place and I’m on various panels and reading on Friday afternoon/evening. More about that later.

What’s your favorite legend or reality of American history?

Posted in Research | Tagged 1812 war, Baltimore Book Festival, Francis Scott Keyes, Star Spangled Banner | 5 Replies