Risky Regencies

Almost back

Updated on May 13, 2016 by Elena Greene

Over a year ago, I wrote this post about needing to take time away from the writing to deal with personal issues. Louisa Cornell made the comment that not only did I need to refill the well, but that I might be needing to dig a whole new one. That isn’t a bad way to look at how I have spent this past year. I’m getting close and look forward to becoming a regular again here by some time this summer.

I did get the chance to meet with some local writer friends for our annual spring retreat, so I’ll leave you with this view of Taughannock Falls, which has become a sacred place to me.

Posted in Writing | Tagged recovery, Taughannock Falls | 2 Replies

The Lives of a Roman Fort

Updated on May 4, 2016 by Sandra Schwab

a picture of the main gate to the Saalburg

Saalburg: Porta Praetoria (the main gate)

As I have surely already mentioned in an earlier post, one of the settings of my upcoming Roman romance EAGLE’S HONOR: RAVISHED is based on a real fort at the Upper German-Raetian limes: the Saalburg, which today is a renowned open air museum with reconstructions of several of the Roman buildings and fortifications. As I was preparing the Author’s Note for my novel, it struck me how many lives this Roman fort has had – and not just in the Roman period.

The first fort on this site was built in timber, but was soon replaced by a larger fort built in timber and stone. A few years later, that fort was expanded and its defenses strengthened. Finally, at some point in the early 270s, the Romans gave up this stretch of the border and withdrew across the Rhine. The fort was abandoned and fell into ruins.

The Germanic people who moved into the area didn’t have much use for stone buildings, but from the Middle Ages onward, the stones from the fort were used for various building projects in the region. The original Roman name of the fort was forgotten; indeed, the very fact that this used to be a Roman fort was forgotten as well. The modern name, Saalburg, dates to the early 17th century and suggests people took the walls to be the remains of an early medieval castle.

It was only in 1723 when a stone altar bearing the name of Caracalla was found that people realized the Saalburg was actually a Roman ruin. But at that point only antiquarians (who were generally considered to be really strange people anyway) were interested in musty ruins, and so the Saalburg continued to be used as a most convenient stone quarry until 1818.

In the early 19th century archaelogy was still in its infancy, carried out by interested amateurs. In England William Cunnington, who started to do excavations of prehistoric sites in Wiltshire in about 1798, revolutionized the methods of archaeology, e.g., by carefully recording digs and finds. But it would take another few decades before archaeology became professionalised.

The increasing professionalisation of archaeology becomes also apparent when we look at the history of excavations of the Saalburg: from 1870 onward, the excavations were state-funded, and the men overseeing the digs aimed at using scientific methods and presenting their findings in a scientific way.

And when plans were made to not just excavate the remains of the fort, but also to reconstruct key buildings such as the principia (the headquarters building), the latest archaeological and historical findings were employed to make the reconstruction as faithful to reality as possible. This first phase of reconstruction work lasted ten years, from 1897 to 1907, and received support from Kaiser Wilhelm II himself.

The military standards at the Saalburg

While this support was no doubt beneficial, it also meant that the Kaiser took an active interest in the project and in some cases influenced the way the reconstruction was done. The most obvious example of this is the presence of an eagle standard in the shrine of the standards in the principia. In Roman times, only legions fought under the eagle standard, and the Saalburg never housed a legion, but only ever auxiliary troops. However, due to the imperial symbolism of the eagle, the Kaiser insisted that the eagle standard was included.

Moreover, in the years since 1900, new research into Roman military architecture has revealed that parts of the early reconstruction are incorrect, for example, the walls surrounding the fort would have been white-washed and the towers of the main gate wokuld have had been higher. Further reconstructions from the 2000s reflect these newer findings.

The Saalburg today thus presents itself as a fascinating hotchpotch of visions of what a Roman fort might have looked like, and it represents yet another phase of that old Roman fort that was first built in this place in the early 2nd century.

Would the soldiers who were stationed here during the reign of Emperor Hadrian recognize their old home in the Saalburg. Bits of it, perhaps. Though I’m not quite sure what they would make of the eagle standard in their shrine…

Posted in History, Places | Tagged Museums, Romans, Saalburg | Leave a reply

Servitude: a Poem written by a Footman

Updated on April 24, 2016 by Rose Lerner

Robert Dodsley by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1760. (Image source: Wikimedia.)

Robert Dodsley was popularly known as the footman poet! Wikipedia explains:

In 1729 Dodsley published his first work, Servitude: a Poem written by a Footman…and a collection of short poems, A Muse in Livery, or the Footman’s Miscellany, was published by subscription in 1732, Dodsley’s patrons comprising many persons of high rank.

Dodsley quit his day job in 1735 (with financial help from, among others, Alexander Pope) and from there his career grew rapidly. By the mid-1730s his plays were being produced in Covent Garden and Drury Lane. He was also a publisher and bookseller:

He published many of [Samuel] Johnson’s works, and he suggested and helped to finance Johnson’s Dictionary. Pope also made over to Dodsley his interest in his letters. In 1738 the publication of Paul Whitehead’s Manners was voted scandalous by the House of Lords and led to Dodsley’s imprisonment for a brief period…[I]n 1751 [he] brought out Thomas Gray’s Elegy.

You can read the first edition of Servitude on Google Books, including the foreword exhorting masters to treat their servants better.

There were actually a fair number of working class poets in eighteenth-century England, though their work has been excluded from the canon. A few of my personal favorites are:

1. Mary Collier. Wikipedia notes:

She read Stephen Duck‘s The Thresher’s Labour (1730) and in response to his apparent disdain for labouring-class women, wrote the 246-line poem for which she is mainly remembered, The Woman’s Labour: an Epistle to Mr Stephen Duck. In this piece she catalogues the daily tasks of a working woman, both outside the home and, at the end of the day, within the home as well:

You sup, and go to Bed without delay,
And rest yourselves till the ensuing Day;
While we, alas! but little Sleep can have…

The preface writer (who is identified only by the initials “MB” which don’t belong to anyone on the title page, so not sure what’s up with that) notes, “I think it no Reproach to the Author, whoſe Life is toilſome, and her Wages inconſiderable, to confeſs honeſtly, that the View of her putting a ſmall Sum of Money in her Pocket, as well as the Reader’s Entertainment, had its Share of Influence upon this Publication.” Relatable!

Read the full text.

2. Ann Yearsley. I love her! She gave no fucks, refused to go to church, and alienated Hannah More by asking for personal control over the money More had “generously” raised for her.

1787 engraving of Ann Yearsley, via Wikimedia Commons.

I have a biography of her called Lactilla: the Milkwoman of Clifton that is just gripping (I’ve only read the first half because I had to start researching True Pretenses, but one day I’m going to finish it!).

3. Mary Leapor.

4. And of course Robert Burns.

For a more comprehensive survey, check out the Database of English and Irish Labouring-class Poets. It’s a work in progress but the first blog entry, entitled “Static Updates of the Database of Labouring-class Poets,” allows you to download the lengthy list of poets.

Listen to the Moon has no poets, but I’d bet anything my valet hero Toogood has read at least Servitude.

Posted in Risky Regencies | 1 Reply

An Unconventional Princess

Updated on April 11, 2016 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Happy Monday, everyone! (is that even a possible thing??) It’s been a while since I sat down with the Riskies, since there have been some back-to-back deadlines here and lots going on, so I am extra excited to be here this week. And I am also working on a new project that I am VERY excited about, concerning Queen Victoria’s most beautiful, rebellious, and interesting daughter, Princess Louise, who was sort of the Princess Diana of her time. Princess Louise, the future Duchess of Argyll, who was born March 18, 1848. As well as being the most beautiful of the princesses, she was a talented artist and sculptor (of a professional caliber), friend of Pre-Raphaelites and other avant-garde artists, as well as a supporter of the suffragist movement and women’s rights.

Princess Louise Caroline Alberta was born at Buckingham Palace, the 6th child and 4th daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in the middle of a year of revolutionary upheaval in Europe, which led her mother to say Louise would surely turn out to be “something peculiar”. She was always lively and vivacious–her family nickname was “Little Miss Why,” and her artistic talent was recognized early on. She was even allowed to attend classes at the National Art Training School in South Kensington, and even though as a royal she could never be a professional she later sculpted many memorials, among them a memorial to the Boer War and one for her brother-in-law Prince Henry of Battenberg, as well as a famous sculpture of her mother now at Kensington Gardens.

Her liveliness was strained after the death of her father in 1861, when the royal court went into prolonged mourning. She wasn’t allowed a debutante ball, as her older sisters had, and she was bored and dissatisfied. She served for a time as her mother’s personal secretary, writing letters and attending to duties Victoria was unable to. Her mother, who had sometimes despaired of her pretty, energetic daughter, said, “She is (and who would some years ago have thought it?) a clever dear girl with a fine strong character, unselfish and affectionate.”

After an unsuitable attachment to her brother’s tutor, a clergyman who late became Canon of Westminster Abbey, and proposed marriages to the Crown Prince of Denmark, Prince Albert of Prussia, and William, Prince of Orange (all shot down by her mother!), Louise decided she wanted to break with tradition and marry a British subject, John, Marquess of Lorne, heir to the Duke of Argyll. Her brother, the Prince of wales, objected, but Queen Victoria liked the idea of “new blood,” writing to her son:

“That which you object to [that Louise should marry a subject] I feel certain will be for Louise’s happiness and for the peace and quiet of the family … Times have changed; great foreign alliances are looked on as causes of trouble and anxiety, and are of no good. What could be more painful than the position in which our family were placed during the wars with Denmark, and between Prussia and Austria? … You may not be aware, as I am, with what dislike the marriages of Princesses of the Royal Family with small German Princes (German beggars as they most insultingly were called) … As to position, I see no difficulty whatever; Louise remains what she is, and her husband keeps his rank … only being treated in the family as a relation when we are together .. “

Louise and Lorne were married on March 21, 1871 at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where she wore a lace veil of her own design. The couple had no children, and though happy at first were later estranged (there have since been rumors Lorne was a homosexual). Lorne was the only royal son-in-law with his own political career, and in 1878 was made Governor General of Canada. Louise was homesick in Ottawa, appalled at the “rough” accomodations at Rideau Hall. But she redecorated, became a social sensation in Canada, enjoyed the outdoors activities like skating and sleighing, and was patron of several charities as well as founder of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. After a serious sleigh accident on February 14, 1880, her health was never quite the same, and she spent more and more time in England, apart from her husband. Lorne returned to England in 1883, where his hopes of growing a larger political career were frustrated and the marriage grew more remote.

Louise moved into the apartment at Kensington Palace where she lived for the rest of her life, and became preoccupied with her own artistic work, as well as family quarrels (especially with her sister Beatrice, who thought Louise was too close to her own husband, the handsome Prince Henry of Battenberg). She became obsessed with physical fitness and diet (her family made fun of her for it, but she lived longer–and looked better–than any of them!). She also became interested in women’s suffrage, and made a point to patronize female physicians.

Her husband was in failing health and declining finances from 1911, and she was reconciled to him and nursed him until his death in 1914. After World War I she mostly retired, except for some charity work. and lived at Kensington next door to her reconciled sister Beatrice. She died Dec. 3, 1939, and was the first royal to be cremated. Her ashes were first deposited at the Royal Crypt at St. George’s, but were then moved to Frogmore with her siblings and parents. Her sculptures can still be seen in London, a monument to a princess who lived her own life within the strict restraints of her birth and times.

For more info, Jehanne Wake has a great biography of the princess, Princess Louise: Queen Victoria’s Unconventional Daughter (1988), and a brand new biography was just released, Lucinda Hawksley’s Queen Victoria’s Mysterious Daughter. I hope some of you find Louise as fascinating as I do!

Posted in History | Tagged art, Princess Louise, Queen Victoria | 3 Replies

New Book, New Life, & Roman Food

Updated on April 7, 2016 by Sandra Schwab

Hello Risky Readers, I’ve got so many exciting news for you this month! First of all, I’ll finally have a new book out: my second Roman romance will be ready for publication later this spring (I’m currently finishing up the revisions). Livia and Adelar’s story is set at the Germanic limes amidst heightening tensions along the borders of the Roman Empire.

I had a lot of fun with this story, not the least because it is set near where I live: I used the Saalburg, the reconstructed Roman fort I mentioned before, as the model for the fort commanded by my heroine’s uncle. I can tell you, it is most strange to stand onthe ramparts now and imagine that this was once the edge of an empire, the edge of what was regarded as the civilized world.

And remember that Roman cooking class I mentioned last month? That was also a bit strange and highly instructive! It also taught me a few things about myself as an author: I have a tendency to go for the weird stuff — in terms of Roman food this would be the fried dormice (sprinkled with poppy seeds), the sow’s udder stuffed with giant African snails, and, well, you get the idea. But of course, such dishes were the extreme, and, as I found out during that cookery class, “normal” Roman food tastes surprisingly… eh… normal. It’s a bit sweeter than what we are used to today because the Romans added honey or mulsum (white wine with honey and spices) to basically EVERYthing. But everything we made in that class was delicious, from the dates filled with walnuts and wrapped in bacon to the pork goulash with dried apricots (and a bottle of mulsum) to the chicken with mulsum and coriander. Yum!

As you can see from the picture above, we ate from replicas of Samian ware (pretty Roman earthenware) and with replicas of Roman spoons (smaller and more shallow than our own spoons). All in all, it was a most delightful afternoon and evening! And all for research! Wheee!

And my last bit of news? Well, as some of you know, my contract as a university lecturer ran out in December and was not renewed. And my chances to find a new job at another university are basically nil, so I needed to rethink my life and career options. Indeed, this whole year will be about rebuilding my life. At the beginning of April I laid the foundation for my new career: I’m now officially freelancing as a translator and cover designer! It’s super-thrilling and super-exciting and super-scary, but I hope I’ll be able to build a much happier life for myself as Sandra Schwab, author, artist, and translator. 🙂

Posted in Research, Writing | Tagged Ancient Rome, food | 6 Replies