I have one week left on my revisions deadline for Listen to the Moon at the moment and a lot of work still to do, so I’m updating and reprinting an old post from my blog—a very topical one, because as I’m sure you’ve heard, this week is the bicentennial of Waterloo. Now, of course the battle was a few days ago, on June 18th, but the news didn’t reach England right away…

This post was inspired by one of those perennial discussions about accuracy in historical romances over at History Hoydens. As you can see from my looong comment, this is something I’ve given a lot of thought to yet totally failed to come up with a coherent policy. I evaluate anachronisms on a case-by-case basis! My anachronism ethics are situational!

But you know what I do hate unequivocally? Apocryphal historical anecdotes repeated as fact. Like how Columbus wanted to prove the world was round (I was taught this in elementary school! It makes me FURIOUS!), or how Queen Victoria didn’t believe in lesbians (this myth is not even that old, it originated in 1977). Now this is frequently a mistake made in good faith but I think that is what annoys me the most—how these lies become so ubiquitous they completely obscure the truth. The truth matters! Which leads me to…

The news of Waterloo. My spy romance A Lily Among Thorns is set in London in the two weeks before the battle.

But…they’re not actually the two weeks before the battle. They’re the two weeks before the news of the battle reached London, late on the night of Wednesday, June 21st. The news quickly spread, turning into an impromptu parade through the streets of London. It must have been so thrilling!

Of course, Nathan Rothschild knew about the outcome of the battle first.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The popular story is that he went to the ‘Change and purposely led traders to believe he knew the battle had been lost. There was a panic and he was able to buy up “consols” (OED: “An abbreviation of Consolidated Annuities, i.e. the government securities of Great Britain”) at a very low price, seizing control of the Bank of England and making his fortune.

I totally believed this! You read about it everywhere! It’s in Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract! (Just another reason to dislike that book.) I included it in the first draft of A Lily Among Thorns. But oops, it is FALSE. The story originated in an anti-Semitic pamphlet in 1846, a clear relative of theories that Jews secretly run the government and/or the economy.

(The post I just linked to, by the way, also makes it clear that Rothschild was not the only person in London to have early news of the battle and that both word-of-mouth and printed rumors were circulating freely by Wednesday morning.)

Here’s what The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson has to say:

No doubt it was gratifying to receive the news of Napoleon’s defeat first, thanks to the speed with which Rothschild couriers were able to relay a newspaper version of the fifth and conclusive extraordinary bulletin—issued in Brussels at midnight on June 18—via Dunkirk and Deal to reach New Court [the location of the Rothschilds’ bank’s London branch] on the night of the 19th. This was just twenty-four hours after Wellington’s victorious meeting with Blücher on the battlefield and nearly forty-eight hours before Major Henry Percy delivered Wellington’s official dispatch to the Cabinet as its members dined at Lord Harrowby’s house (at 11 p.m. on the 21st.) Indeed, so premature did Nathan’s information appear that it was not believed when he relayed it to the government on the 20th; nor was a second Rothschild courier from Ghent.

He then explains that Waterloo was actually financially disastrous for the Rothschilds, who were financing the British army and had all their money tied up in things that were suddenly no longer necessary—and no longer likely to be paid for by the government.

In London, a frantic Nathan sought to make good the damage; and it is in this context that the firm’s purchases of British stocks have to be seen. On [June] 20, the evening edition of the London Courier reported that Nathan had made “great purchases of stock.” A week later Roworth heard that Nathan had “done well by the early information which you had of the Victory gained at Waterloo” and asked to participate in any further purchased of government stock “if in your opinion you think any good can be done.” This would seem to confirm the view that Nathan did indeed buy consols on the strength of his prior knowledge of the battle’s outcome. However, the gains made in this way cannot have been very great. As Victor Rothschild conclusively demonstrated, the recovery of consols from their nadir of 53 in fact predated Waterloo by over a week, and even if Nathan had made the maximum possible purchase of £20,000 on June 20, when consols stood at 56.5 and sold a week later when they stood at 60.6, his profits would barely have exceeded £7,000.

(As a matter of fact, even the supposed quote from the Courier simply does not exist—and mention of it first appeared two years after the publication of the abovementioned anti-Semitic pamphlet, as a new footnote in the second edition of a very popular history of Europe.)

Ferguson goes on to demonstrate that the Rothschild brothers were in dire financial straits all through 1815 and beyond—they did come out on top in the end, of course, but not with a controlling interest in the Bank of England. (He also talks at length about their disorganized accounting practices. The whole chapter is incredibly detailed and fascinating—I haven’t read the whole book yet but I want to.)

Diane did a great Riskies post on this topic around the same time I made my original post, which includes a lovely account of the news of the battle reaching England. I really recommend watching the video even though it’s kind of long—and if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, at LEAST watch the first couple minutes so you can see the clip from a Nazi propaganda film depicting an exaggerated version of the apocryphal Consols story.

What’s your favorite/least favorite apocryphal historical anecdote?

(And by the way, A Lily Among Thorns fans, I am taking reader prompts and requests for mini-stories about the characters of Lily in honor of the Bicentennial, so stop by and tell me who/what you’d like to know more about!)

It feels like it’s been forever since I was at the Riskies!  The last several weeks have been spent moving to a new city (and looking for weird stuff in random boxes, because I packed teapots and mugs in different places, and lost the toothpaste…yet I could easily find 20 pairs of shoes!), getting the dog and cat children settled, and most important–getting a library card!  It’s nice to settle back into a writing routine again (I’m working on my 6th Elizabethan Mystery, Murder at Fontainebleau), and take a look at an interesting woman in history for June…

Today we are looking at one of the fascinating women of Regency(ish) history, Harriet Martineau, a Whig writer and social theorist who was called “the first woman sociologist.” She was born June 12, in 1802 in Norwich, England, the 6th of 8 children of a manufacturer. Her family was descended from Huguenots (hence the last name) and of liberal Whig, Unitarian views. She grew up educated and in an intellectual environment, but her health was not good and she became quite deaf at a very young age, which forced her to use an ear trumpet. At 16 she was sent away from home to visit her aunt, who kept a school in Bristol, in hopes that a change of scene would help her health. From 1819 to 1830 she returned to reside in Bristol, and in 1821 began writing anonymously for the Unitarian periodical Monthly Repository, with her first book, Devotional Exercises and Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns coming out in 1823 (she would eventually write more than 50 volumes, on a wide variety of subjects).

In 1826 her father died (soon after the deaths of her eldest brother and her suitor), leaving her and her mother and sisters poverty-stricken. Since her deafness kept her from teaching, Harriet took up serious writing. She went on writing for the Repository as well as short stories (later collected in the volume Traditions of Palestine), won 3 essay prizes from the Unitarian Association in only one year, and did needlework to supplement her writing income. In 1831 she published the first volume ofIllustrations of Political Economy, which was a huge success, with demand increasing for each following volume. In 1832 she moved to London and moved in circles that inluded such people as John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the Brownings, and Thomas Carlyle. She was also friends with Florence Nightingale and Charlotte Bronte. She finished her political economy series, another series titled Illustrations of Taxation, and stories in support of the Whig Poor Law reforms.

In May 1834, Charles Darwin on his Pacific voyage received a letter from his sisters saying that Martineau was “a great Lion in London” and sending him her Poor Laws and Paupers Illustratedin pamphlet size. They also said their brother “Erasmus knows her & is a very great admirer.” When Darwin returned home in 1836 he stayed with his brother in London and found that Erasmus spent a lot of time “driving out Miss Martineau.” The Darwins and Harriet had in common their Unitarian background and liberal Whig politics, but their father thought perhaps her views were a bit TOO liberal for a daughter-in-law and the pair never married. But Charles called on her and stated “she was very agreeable, and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects” though he was also “astonished to find how ugly she is” and “she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and abilities”. Erasmus told his brother “one ought not to look at her as a woman.”

In 1834 she went on a long trip to the United States, where she became an adherent f the Abolitionists and later published Theory and Practice of Society in America and Retrospect of Western Travel, as well as an article called “The Martyr Age of the United States” in theWestminster Review. Her outspoken opinions on the evils of slavery caused a great deal of offense, but she did not care. She followed up this work with a novel, Deerbrook, a story about a surgeon hero and middle-class life.

On a trip to Europe in 1839 she fell ill, and went to stay with her sister and brother-in-law, the well-known doctor Thomas Greenhow, in Newcastle on Tyne to try and alleviate her symptoms (believed to be caused by an ovarian cyst). She then moved to Tynemouth, where she stayed for nearly 5 years in the clean sea air and wrote 3 books, including a novel about the Haitian rebel L’Ouverture and Life in the Sick Room. She loved her new telescope, which allowed her to take in the life of the town and the beach from her window (it’s thought the busybody Mrs. Jellyby in Dickens’s Bleak House is based on her, though she went on being friends with Dickens himself!). She wrote beautifully on her picture of the town: “When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glistening snow, while the myrtle-green sea tumbles–there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape.”

In 1844 she underwent a course of the mesmerism,which she declared returned her to health within months and wrote an account of her case, which caused friction with her sister and brother-in-law, the conventional doctor! In 1845 she left Tynemouth for the Lake District and her new home The Knoll, which she would live in for the rest of her life. In 1846 she made a tour of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria and wrote Eastern Life, Present and Past, which also caused controversy with its “infidel tendency.” She also published a volume called which stated that freedom and rationality, not command and obediance, should be the basis of education. She followed up with a history volume written from the view of a “philosophical Radical”, Household EducationThe History of the Thirty Years’ Peace, 1816–1846. She was always busy, contributing weekly to The Daily News, visiting Ireland and writing Letters from Ireland, and writing for Westminster Review. Her 1838 book How to Observe Morals and Manners laid out some of her general views, that very general social laws influence the life of any society, such as the principle of progress, the emergence of science as the most advanced product of human intellectual endeavor, and the significance of population dynamics and natural physical environment (principles which still hold true today!).

In 1855 she found she suffered from heart disease and started work on her autobiography (though she lived for 20 more years). It was published in 2 volumes posthumously in 1877. She also undertook the translation of Auguste Comte into English, which was published as The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau), which Comte himself recommeneded to his students rather than his own!

She died at The Knoll on June 27, 1876.

Some sources on Martineau’s life:
Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography: With Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman (1877)
Deborah Anna Logan, The Hour and the Woman: Harriet Martineau’s “Somewhat Remarkable” Life, 2002
Valerie Sanders, Reason Over Passion: Harriet Martineau and the Victorian Novel, 1986
David Deeirdre, Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot (1989)

It’s so wonderful to be back at the Riskies again!  It feels like this is the Winter That Will Not End (illness, snow, rinse, repeat), but I am finally seeing the sunlight at the end of the tunnel.  And one of the best things about spring (maybe0 being on the way, is the release of a very special project!

As a Risky reader will know, I range among many different time periods in my writing–Regency, Elizabethan, Renaissance, etc.  One of my very favorite time periods (especially with the Downton mania of the last few years!) is the Edwardian/WWI/1920s era.  It’s very reminiscent of the Regency in many ways (warfare, fast-moving societal changes, not to mention amazing clothes…), but I’ve only been able to write one 1920s story in the past (Girl With the Beaded Mask), but all that changed a few months ago.

I have 3 great writer friends I get to see (almost) every Friday night, at 4:30 happy hour on the dot, at the Martini Lounge a few miles from my house.  This is an amazing place, said to have been a speakeasy in the 1920s (though when I was a kid, it was my grandfather’s favorite donut shop, where I could eat as many chocolate pastries as I wanted while he talked to his old-man friends about farming!).  Now it’s an elegant bar/steakhouse, with velvet booths, dim lighting, jazz music, and an astonishing array of cocktails.  Kathy L Wheeler, Alicia Dean, Krysta Scott, and I meet to talk over what we’re writing, and one eveing we had the brilliant idea–why didn’t we write something together!  Set at the Martini Lounge!  So 4 girls from the 1920s had their beginnings in 4 connected novellas that have now been launched out into the world.  Much like our 4 heroines left their English homes for new lives in NYC….

I wondered what those 4 heroines–Lady Jessica (an earl’s daughter who would rather be a journalist than dance at deb balls), Lady Meggie (her schoolfriend, who would rather sing in a jazz band and seek fame and fortune than dance at deb balls), Eliza (a maidservant who fled a lecherous employer–only to find herself in an even worse jam on the streets of NY), and Charlotte (Jess and Meggie’s shy friend, who finds the strength to flee an arranged marriage and follow her own dreams), would drink when they meet at the Martini Lounge’s 1920s counterpart Club 501?

Alicia Dean says Eliza’s drink choice is easy–a Fallen Angel!

Shake all ingredients (except cherry) with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with the cherry and serve.

Kathy L Wheeler chose Meggie’s–a Virgin Mary (since Meggie is a singer, she doesn’t drink much on the job–but that doesn’t count for after hours!)

4 oz tomato juice, 1 dash lemon juice, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 drops tabasco

Fill a large wine glass with ice. Add tomato juice, then the rest of the ingredients. Stir and garnish with a wedge of lime.

I found out that one of my favorite (modern day) drinks, a French 75, was also very popular in the 1920s!!!  (even with one of the models for Lady Jessica, Nancy Mitford), so I decided Jess could drink that…

1 oz. gin
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice
Brut Champagne or a dry sparkling white wine
Lemon twist, to garnish

Combine gin, simple syrup, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake until well chilled and strain into a glass. Top with Champagne and garnish with a lemon twist to serve.

And for Charli, who has dreams of opening her own bakery, a caramel apple martini!

2 parts Schnapps, butterscotch, 2 parts Sour Apple Pucker, 1 part vodka.  Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

We are so excited to have these stories out in the world!!!  To one commenter today, we’ll give copies of the stories (either e-book or, in a few weeks, hard copies), plus a Martini Club 4 cocktail glass for mixing up your own favorite cocktails.  Do you have a favorite drink?  Any special happy-hour rituals with friends??

(to buy the ML stories, here is the link on Amazon, or you can visit my website for more info…)

(and if you’d like a glimpse of the real Club 501, here is their website!)