Happy week after Thanksgiving, everyone!  I hope you had a lovely holiday.  I turned in a WIP last Friday (yay!), and am taking a breath before diving into the next story tomorrow (which is a Christmas book, the next in my Elizabethan Mystery series–I think this is the first Christmast story I have ever written near the actual holiday.  Usually they seem to be due in July, and I have no snowy holiday feelings when it’s 94 degrees outside…).  In the meantime, I am taking a look back at my reading this year…

As usual, I seem to have spent most of my time reading research books, but I also came across some wonderful fiction, and also some new non-fiction!  What did you enjoy reading this year??

I always get so excited when there is a new Jude Morgan book on the shelf!  (I know Risky Janet is also a fan…)  This year it was The Secret Life of William Shakespeare, which did not disappoint.  (There wasn’t actually much “secret” about it, but the alternating POV between Will and his wife was very well done, and the atmosphere of Elizabethan England was wonderful)

IMO, the world definitely needs more ballet novels, and last summer I devoured Maggie Shipstead’s Astonish Me (which was over way too soon…)

Also, the world needs more novels about bookshops.  And secret manuscripts.  And lost love.  Like Charlie Lovett’s The Bookman’s Tale…

There were two non-fiction histories, both of which pointed out in stark terms that the real life of princesses is often far from storybook, but rather isolating, lonely, helpless, and sometimes even terrifying, even though these two sets of royal sisters were 100 years and several countries apart–A Royal Experiment by Janice Hadlow, about the family of George III (6 daughters, kept isolated at home, growing increasingly desperate and bitter) and The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport (4 sisters, kept isolated at home, dying untimely and horrifyingly violent deaths)

I love a good historical mystery, and I also love the history of the Gilded Age in America, so of course I devoured Alyssa Maxwell’s Murder at the Breakers (and can’t wait for the rest of the series…)

Historical romances are always saved as treats for vacation and/or time between deadlines (when I dangle them as “finish the book” carrots in front of myself!), so this weekend I am looking forward to diving into Risky Megan’s Duke’s Guide to Correct Behavior!  (I also read two great new romances a few weeks ago, Meredith Duran’s Fool Me Twice, and Mary Balogh’s Only Enchanting, both of which had wonderful, realistic, heartbreaking characters…)

I’ve also been zooming my way through the DVDs of season two of the “Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries” (one of the few instances where I much prefer the movies to the books!).  The 1920s fashions, cars, cocktails, and Phryne Fisher’s shining bob and naughty jokes are so much fun!

And now i am off to start my reading list for 2015!!!

This post would probably be more appropriate in mid-July, but as things start to cool down here in the Northeast, my mind turns to ice.

Holkham Hall Ice House

In grand estates of the 18th century and early 19th century ice was harvested and kept in ice houses, especially built for the purpose. Ice houses were usually filled with fresh ice every winter. They were usually situated near a pond or a lake, such as the one still extant at Holkham Hall, Norfolk. Once the lake froze in winter, the gardeners would break the ice and take it by cart to the ice house where it was pounded by mallets into a powder,and then rammed down into the ice house to form a solid mass.A lining of staw was usually put between the wall of the ice house and the ice to insulate it. The entrance lobby was simularly insulated with straw.

Ice House Section

As you can see from the diagram here, these houses were constructed so that the main part of the storage area was below ground for insulation purposes. The one at Godmersham, home of Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight, was also shaded by tress grown around the entrance mound of the ice house .

Once it was empty of ice in late summer the ice house would have been used as a temporary store for root vegetables. Until around around 1820, ice houses in cool weather were used solely for storing ice.  Around that time, it was  realized that the ice house could be used as a very simple freezer, and could preserve fruit such as cherries, strawberries, raspberries, and peaches.

A better name for these buildings was an Ice Well- this was the term used in the 1660’s when they were first introduced into England from Italy.

Of note, of course, is that one of the uses for ice from these ice houses was making sorbets and ice creams.

A good book on this subject is Elizabeth David’s  Harvest of the Cold Months; A Social History of Ice and Ices .

Here is a recipe for fruit ice cream from Mrs Rundell’s cookery book,  A New System of Domestic Cookery, published in 1816.  This recipe gives details of the “ice cream maker” in use at the time.

Get a few pounds of ice, break it almost to powder, throw a large handful and a half of salt among it. You must prepare it in a part of the house where as little of the warm air comes as you can possibly contrive.

The ice and salt being in a bucket,  put your cream into an ice-pot, and cover it; immerse it in the ice, and draw that round the pot ,so as to touch every possible part.

In a few minutes put a spatula or spoon in, and stir it well, removing the parts that ice round the edge to the centre. If the ice cream, or water, be in a form, shut the bottom close, and move the whole in the ice, as you cannot use a spoon to that without danger of waste. There should be holes in the bucket, to let off the ice as it thaws.

Georgian Ices

Note.When any fluid tends towards cold, the moving of it quickly accelerates the cold; and likewise, when any fluid is tending to heat, stirring it will facilitate its boiling.

Mix the juice of the fruits with as much sugar as will be wanted, before you add cream, which should be of middling richness.

Ivan Day’s wonderful site on historic food, has a great page on Georgian Ices (also the source of the picture above).

At Stratfield Saye, the Duke of Wellington’s country house, the stables are turned into a museum showing artifacts from the Duke’s life.

The star of the exhibit is, of course, the Victorianly-excessive funeral carriage.

But there were other pieces, too.

Wellington’s umbrella with a steel spike used in 1830 during the Reform Bill Riots when Wellington was not very popular with the citizenry.

A dispatch bag belonging to Joseph Bonaparte’s treasurer captured after the Battle of Vitoria

A caricature

A feed bag

Record of feeding of horses (Copenhagen is listed)

Photograph of footmen in livery

Omigosh, that livery looks dreadful! Not at all like handsome Thomas from Downton Abbey

(Not that any Regency footman would be dressed as Thomas!)

Can you tell I’m still missing England?

This weekend I attended the New Jersey Romance Writers Put Your Heart In A Book annual conference. My A Marriage of Notoriety was a finalist for their Golden Leaf contest. Alas, it did not win. That honor went to Caroline Linden for Love and Other Scandals.

But it was a great consolation to me that I had two of the Risky Regencies at my side to console me. Elena and Gail and I got to spend a little bit of time together and that was really wonderful. Here’s our selfie as proof:

On Sunday after the conference I went into the City (New York City, of course) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gazed upon some familiar and loved paintings of “our” era (well, a little before our era), like this 1790 Thomas Lawrence of Elizabeth Farren, the Irish actress who later became the Countess of Derby.

But I also saw some new-to-me portraits.

Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait (1766) of The Honorable Henry Fane, Inigo Jones, and Charles Blair.

The Inigo Jones of this portrait (left) is a descendent and namesake of the celebrated architect of the same name.

Henry Fane (center) (1739-1802) was the second son of the 8th Earl of Westmorland and was once describes as “very idle and careless and spending much timie in the country”–with friends like Charles and Inigo, I wonder? He became a MP for Lyme Regis, the family’s rotten borough. He married the daughter of a banker and had 14 children!

Charles Blair (right) is Fane’s brother-in-law, about whom there is nothing in Wikipedia (even I appear in Wikipedia). To me, he is the most prominent figure in the portrait.

Another portrait I’d not seen before was this Henry Raeburn portrait of George Harley Drummond.

Drummond’s life reads like a character from a Regency novel…and I don’t mean the hero! He was born into a banking family but was orphaned at the age of five and brought up by relatives. His father was a terrible spendthrift and gambler and left his son with huge debts, but those banking relatives managed to build up the fortune again by the time Drummond reached his majority. He turned out, though, to be just as reckless as his father. The relatives, recognizing this, did not let him become a partner in the bank, although he received an income from it. He made a hasty marriage, built a castle he couldn’t afford, and became an MP for two terms. In 1820 his debts caught up with him. (He was said to have lost £20,000 to Beau Brummmell in one session at White’s). He deserted his wife and ran off with the wife of a Navy captain. Ultimately he fled his creditors and escaped to Ireland where he lived the rest of his life.

This painting, though, was more renowned because of its depiction of the grazing horse. To paint the horse in this position was a very difficult endeavor. No one knows why Raeburn painted the horse with its hindquarters so prominent, but I think the artist might have been trying to say that the subject of the portrait was a horse’s ass.

The painting does show a gentleman’s clothes in great detail, though.

All in all I had a wonderful weekend! Risky Regencies, fellow writers, famous paintings and a horse’s ass!
How was your weekend?