Risky Regencies

Enter the British Tourist: The Romance of the River Rhine

Updated on June 3, 2015 by Sandra Schwab

A few days ago I celebrated my 10-year blogiversary. I started blogging only a few weeks before my debut novel was due to hit stores in July 2005. (Ten years ago — gosh!) At the time I was working on my second novel, Castle of the Wolf, a gothic romance (or at least it was intended as a gothic romance) in which my English heroine inherits a castle in the Black Forest, but, alas, finds it inhabited by the grumpiest man imaginable (but sort of hot, too) (of course!). And she has to marry him (of course!). There’s an unfortunate incident with a dead mouse, another unfortunate incident with a not-dead bat, and a lady with sturdy boots who stomps all the gothicness to dust. Quite… eh… literally.

And because my heroine needed to somehow get from England to the Black Forest, I decided it would be awesome (AWESOME!!!) if she traveled up the Rhine, past the lovely castles of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. And maybe I could put in one of those gruesome folk tales? (Because, see above, gothic romance.) Like, the story of the evil Bishop Odo of Mainz being devoured by mice in his tower in the middle of the river? Awesome.

So I spent about two weeks (or more) doing research on traveling on the Rhine and, incidentally, also on British tourists on the Rhine. (Two weeks of research for half a page in the finished book. Just saying.) I pushed back the date of my story to 1827 because that was the first year which saw steamboats on the Rhine, and even tried to see if I could dig up a timetable for said steamboats. (In case you needed any further proof that I tend to go a bit batty where research is concerned: there it is.)

The rising interest in the Rhine and in particular in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley (the super-beautiful part between Bingen and Koblenz, with all the pretty castles clinging to the hills on each side of the river — now a UNESCO World Heritage site) at the end of the eighteenth century was in large parts due to Romanticism as well as to the new aesthetic ideal of the picturesque.

A sketch of Castle Sooneck

The first wave of British tourists arrived in the late eighteenth century — among them Anne Radcliffe, who afterwards wrote a whole book about her trip, Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany with a Return down the Rhine, published in 1795. And it seems that she was quite enchanted by what she saw:

“Sometimes, as we approached a rocky point, we seemed going to plunge into the expanse of the water beyond; when, turning the sharp angle of the promontory, the road swept along an ample bay, where the rocks, receeding formed an amphitheatre, […] then […] we saw the river beyond […] assume the form of a lake, amidst wild and romantic landscapes.”

The steadily increasing stream of tourists came to a halt during the Napoleonic Wars, but immediately resumed afterwards. Going to see the castles of the Rhine became so popular that later in the century the author Thomas Hood remarked,

“It is a statistical fact that since 1814 an unknown number of persons have been more or less abroad, and of all the Countries in Christendom, never was there such a run as on the Banks of the Rhine. It was impossible to go into Society without meeting units, tens, hundreds, thousands of Rhenish tourists. What a donkey they deemed him who had not been to Assmannshausen!”

Incidentally, the most wildly popular English poet also happened to write the most wildly popular account of a journey on the Rhine: since the publication of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, many British tourists would drag a copy along on their travels so they could trace Childe Harold’s steps. This becomes obvious in the Shelleys’ History of a Six Weeks’ Tour from 1817:

“The part of the Rhine down which we now glided, is that so beautifully described by Lord Byron in his third Canto of Childe Harold. We read these verses with delight, as they conjured before us these lovely scenes with the truth and vividness of painting, and with the exquisite addition of glowing language and warm imagination. We were carried down by a dangerously rapid current, and saw on either side of us hills covered with vines and trees, craggy cliffs crowned by desolate towers, and wooded islands, where picturesque ruins peeped from behind the foliage, and cast shadows of their forms on the troubled waters, which distorted without deforming them.”

Soon, a whole tourist industry grew up around Rhine travels: 1822 saw the publication of the first panorama of the Rhine, consisting of a folded map of the river with larger pictures of the most important sights. Three years later, a publisher in Frankfurt released a panorama of the river and included a small leaflet with explanations of the sights in French, English, and German. (You can take a look at it here.)

Soon, proper guidebooks followed, like Baedeker’s Die Rheinreise (Journey on the Rhine) of 1832. On the other side of the Channel, the firm of John Murray, one of the most influential British publishers with authors like Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, started to publish the famous “Red Books”, the Handbooks for Travellers. And again, not surprisingly, the first of the series was the Handbook for Holland, Belgium and the Rhine.

A picture of Baedeker's Traveller's Manual of Conversation

Another of Baedeker’s early publications: The Traveller’s Manual of Conversation in Four Languages

Murray and Baedeker soon joined forces and started to distribute each other’s guidebooks. To make them more uniform, Baedeker also used red cloth for the covers. Indeed, their guidebooks were all standardized, were regularly updated, and were made to fit comfortably into a coat pocket.

But that’s not all.

The star-based rating system that’s now used by online retailers, booksellers and review sites?

That was invented by John Murray for his guidebooks. (So now we know who’s to blame for that!)

The steamboat that were introduced in 1827 formed yet another part of the new tourist industry focusing on Rhine travels. The traditional way of traveling on the river was on boats dragged by horses, and the owners of the horses were not particularly happy about the new steamboats that took business away from them. And so, in 1848, the stable owners of the town of Neuwied fired cannon balls (!!!) at one of the steamboat to express their displeasure — a rather drastic measure (and not a particularly successful one: the boat was hardly damaged and, of course, the steamboat didn’t go away).

Have you ever been on a river cruise? And fellow authors, do you use guidebooks for your research?

Posted in Places, Regency, Research | Tagged Rhine, travel, travel books | 2 Replies

That which we call a historical romance hero by any other name would smell like sandalwood and MAN

Updated on May 25, 2015 by Rose Lerner

Naming characters has been on my mind recently. I’ve been cleaning up and doing the first round of beta revisions on the next Lively St. Lemeston book, and I always leave a lot of names of secondary characters to be finalized at the end. I’m also planning my next project, a novella for an anthology, so I’m choosing names for my central characters.

I take names very seriously, especially for heroes and heroines. I was on a writing date with a friend, working for hours, and I think she was a little taken aback to realize I was thrilled to have finalized three names! What can I say, I’m picky about names. Plus, the heroine and her best friend in the novella are both not originally from England, which means tracking down a different set of naming resources than I usually use.

So I thought today I’d share some of my favorite naming resources, plus the fruits of my recent research.

Resources, England:

The Guiness Book of Names by Leslie Dunkling includes lists of the top fifty first names for girls and boys in England and Wales for 1700 and 1800. I figure names on either list are fair game.

Homes of Family Names in Great Britain by Henry Brougham Guppy (possessor of an amazing name himself), 1890, includes lists of English last names organized by county, sometimes with notes on their origin. I love this book so much I had it printed and bound at the Third Place Books espresso book machine. Did I mention organized by county?

I stole this trick from Cecilia Grant: Debrett’s Baronetage of England, 1835, is a great place to find first and last names that I can be sure are appropriate for an aristocratic character.

When I’m choosing a title rather than a last name (e.g., the Earl of Tassell), I sometimes go with a last name, and sometimes with a place name. The Guiness Book of Names, mentioned above, has a lot of great place names in it, plus building blocks for creating your own. Wikipedia also provides lists of villages in UK counties. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Villages_in_West_Sussex

Genealogy sites are an amazing resource, and you can often find them for other countries, too! My favorite for Regency England is this Genes Reunited database of England and Wales death records from 1837 forward. Here’s a search for the name Clementia limited to people born between 1770 and 1790. As you can see it is great at recognizing related names, too!

Resources, Not England:

The thing about naming characters from other countries and cultures is that I don’t have intuition about the name. Even when I was naming the Jewish characters in True Pretenses, I discovered that Ashkenazi Jewish surnames (very familiar to me in their modern form) were completely different during the Regency. So I only chose last names that actually appeared in my research books, and I did the same for some first names (though not all–a couple of people who are only briefly mentioned have common Yiddish or Ladino names that I just hope were in use at the time, like Faige and Speranza). Obviously that provides less options, but I really didn’t want to fuck it up.

I followed the same method for naming an Indian secondary character/future heroine in my upcoming book, although I’m still hoping to find more good online resources for this before I write her book and have to choose dozens of names.

(For a good start at understanding the complexities of naming an Indian character without accidentally mixing and matching religion, location, caste &c., check out these tips from Alisha Rai and Suleikha Snyder. You can see them walking someone through the naming process too! Of course, that’s not even getting into whether the name was used in a particular time period.)

For naming the heroine of my novella, who was born in Portugal, I started with Behind the Name’s list of Portuguese girls’ names. Once I had a shortlist of names I liked, I tested their historicity by plugging them into this FamilySearch database of Portugal Catholic baptisms 1570-1910. (Obviously this only works for Catholic names!)

The name I eventually chose: Magdalena Da Silva. She goes by Maggie.

For naming her best friend (with benefits), I found this amazing database of eighteenth century Dutch Ashkenazi Jews (organized in lists alphabetically by surname which makes it fantabulously usable for my purposes). His name: Meyer Hennipzeel. He goes by Meyer Henney in England.

While paging through Debrett’s for my hero (eventually named Simon Radcliffe-Gould), I discovered some marvelous things.

Debrett’s contains a list of baronet family mottoes. I haven’t had time to go through it fully but my favorite on the first page is “Agitatione purgator. Cleansed by agitation. Russell, of Middlesex.”

I found a couple of family crests worthy of Monty Python. The Acton family, of Aldenham Hall, Shropshire, are represented by “A human leg and thigh in armour, couped, and dropping blood, all proper, garnished, or.” [Image]

And the Prices of Treggwainton, Cornwall, use “On a wreath of the colours a dragon’s head vert, erased gules, holding in its mouth a sinister hand erect, couped, dropping blood from the wrist, all proper.” [Image–and look, you can buy a set of Georgian silver dessert spoons with this crest on it!]

And of course, names:

Buckworth-Herne-Soames
Dalrymple-Horn-Elphinstone
Vanden-Bempde-Johnstone
Philadelphia-Letitia Cotton
Sir Peter Parker

And my absolute favorite…

…the Page-Turners! YES. There was an actual family named the Page-Turners. I want to name my hero this so badly, I can’t even tell you. I know it would be distracting but it’s SO FUNNY. I don’t think I would ever get tired of it.

Sir Gregory Page-Turner (1748–1805). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

This guy is a babe, I have to say. I also enjoyed this tidbit about his life:

“Sir Edward Turner, 2nd Baronet had a country house, Ambrosden House, built by the architect Sanderson Miller in the 1740s. Sir Gregory never lived at Ambrosden, thought the house too big and in 1767 sought to demolish part of it to make it smaller. This proved impractical so in 1768 he had the entire house demolished.”

Do you have a favorite historical name you’d like to see in a book? How about a favorite name resource?

ETA: Joanna Bourne alerted me to this, for late 18th-century French names: The Guillotined. So cool!

Posted in Names, Research | 20 Replies

More on the Foundling Hospital

Updated on May 21, 2015 by Janet Mullany

Here at the Riskies we return quite frequently to the topic of London’s Foundling Hospital, founded by sea captain Thomas Coram, composer George Handel, and artist William Hogarth. Today I’m sharing some recent finds I made–one is this quite splendid documentary Messiah at the Foundling Hospital (sit tight, it’s an hour long).

I discovered more about Hogarth’s contributions. He designed the logo in the form of a coat of arms, which is, as the documentary’s narrator points out, quite brilliant. Because it’s a coat of arms, it would have had instant appeal for the well-heeled aristocrats who were being targeted as donors. But the legend is in English–just one word: Help.

Arms of the Foundling Hospital

To be honest I’m not sure who the figure on the left is–a sort of female corkscrew? Anyone know? On the right is Britannia. The rest is self-explanatory, the baby and the innocent lamb. Anyway, the point is that this worked. It became hip and fashionable to be a philanthropist.

Hogarth also designed the children’s uniforms, some of which are on display at The Foundling Museum in London. (Ignore the well-scrubbed angelic appearance of the children in this painting. The clothes are correct.)

One perspective I’ve never encountered before is what other, more fortunate, children thought of foundlings and orphans. Some families might have a young maid who was trained at the Foundling Hospital. One can only hope that no impressionable child saw the dying and abandoned babies on the streets of London whose fate so moved Coram. Here’s a sampler made in 1825 by ten-year-old Mary Ann Quatermain.

But back to those uniforms. What happened to the clothes the children wore when they were admitted? Historian Alice Dolan tells us that:

In 1757, when the Hospital was overwhelmed by the clothing due to the large influx of children, the Hospital committee decided to sell the

‘old Raggs and useless things brought in with the Children of this Hospital’

because they were causing problems with ‘Vermin’.

After enquiries, the Hospital Committee decided to sell to the rag merchant Mrs Jones in Broad St Giles who would pay 28 shillings a stone for linen rags and 4 shillings 6 pence a stone for woollen rags. This was more than twice what her competitor Joseph Thompson offered for the linen and woollen rags.

Considering the thousands of children were admitted to the Hospital, this was a valuable form of income. It’s a reminder too, that nothing was discarded–vermin or not–if it could be sold or upcycled.

The exhibit Threads of Feeling, some of the fabric samples and tokens mothers handed in with their babies for later identification, showed a few years ago at the DeWitt Museum in Williamsburg. Both I and Diane, who blogged about it, visited. While I was poking around online I checked out future exhibits at the Foundling Museum, although I doubt I’ll get to any. Are you planning, or have you been to, anything inspiring at a museum recently?

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged Coram, Foundlings Hospital, Handel, Hogarth, Threads of Feeling | 4 Replies

What I Don’t Know Could Fill a Book

Updated on May 18, 2015 by Mary Blayney

Sandra’s post on May 11th regarding her exhausting (in both contexts) research on Roman history and life is the perfect lead in to my much less ambitious undertaking.

Here is the link to her post: https://riskyregencies.com/2015/05/06/fictionalizing-the-past/

Really, after fifteen years of researching regencies, and writing them, I thought I knew all I needed to know. I’ll be honest and admit I wrote around the subjects that did not interest me too much (Parliament and politics for one) but felt I had a good handle on how MY Regency set characters lived.

In fact, writing a historical requires its own sort of world building. Not as totally as, say science fiction, but certainly there is a lot of room for the imagination. In the end the writer interprets the regency lifestyle based on her understanding of history and her own view of life, or how she would like life to be. Without a doubt the importance of the history of time and place matter more to some authors and readers than it does to others.

It’s important to me. I was a history major in college (American history unfortunately) and brought that fascination with me when I decided to write a regency. I have been forever grateful to early blogs I participated in. They gave me a chance to share the information that I never used in a story but could not abandon before I knew way too much about said subject.

Now I’m faced with a challenge. I’m starting a series I referred to in my last blog post. Here is the link if you want to catch up: https://riskyregencies.com/2015/04/20/writing-and-reading-a-series/

I find I need to know everything I can about the life of an Anglican vicar. From the get go I can see MY vicar is not cast in the usual mode. The spiritual life and general well-being of the people in his village are more important to him than an invitation to the right homes or parties (definitely not a Mr. Collins.) I can deal with that. But, because of it, I want to get as much of the rest of his world right.

I’ve pulled all possible books off my shelves including a treasure titled A COUNTRY PARSON 1759 to 1802. Too bad it’s before the war with Napoleon but it should still be useful, don’t you think?

In the meantime here is what Pennsford looks like. I’m sure I can count on you to ignore the modern roadway.

The picture above, after the third paragraph, is a hand-stitiched image of one of Pennsford’s cottages

Please tell me how you start researching a subject you know little about and, as reader, how important to you is the accuracy of the world a regency author builds. And if anyone knows any specific books about a vicar’s life around 1817 please share!

Posted in History, Research, Risky Regencies | 16 Replies

Where Were You?

Updated on May 13, 2015 by susanna

There are a handful of events that for good or ill (more often for ill, unfortunately) are unforgettable. I’ll never forget where I was when I heard about the Challenger disaster–I was in 9th grade, and they announced it over the intercom during 4th period Alabama History.

I found out about the 9/11 attacks when I was awakened by a phone call from my parents, who were supposed to be flying into Seattle for a visit later that day. Mom said, “All flights have been canceled.” Assuming she meant all flights out of Birmingham, I asked if there’d been some kind of storm or problem at the airport. She told me there had been a terrorist attack and to turn on the TV.

And most recently, a few years ago I was waiting for dinner at Red Robin with my husband and daughter. Mr. Fraser and I were checking Twitter on our phones, as internet addicts are wont to do, when tweets started to buzz with the news that President Obama was about to “address the nation.”

It sounded ominous, so we speculated about possible war with Iran or North Korea. I also worried that it might be something like a hideous cancer diagnosis for either the President or the First Lady, and that he might be stepping down and handing the reins to Vice-President Biden because of it–ever since I lost both my parents to lung cancer, my mind goes to the C-word in a hurry.

Instead, of course, the big news was the death of Osama bin Laden. We’d figured it out from Twitter before one of the TV feeds in the restaurant switched from sports to the news–which was neither captioned nor audible in the noisy restaurant, so Mr. Fraser and I leaned over the booths to tell our fellow diners what was happening as soon as we heard their baffled concern. Eventually, the headline at the bottom of the screen said something like, “Bin Laden death confirmed,” and the line cooks, most of whom would’ve been in junior high on 9/11, started cheering and stomping their feet.

We were home by the time the president actually spoke, so Mr. Fraser and I stood together our den–somehow it seemed too solemn a moment for lounging on the couch–and listened.

Chelsea pensioners

In the time period I write about, there was plenty of momentous news, though of course it rippled through the world much more slowly. I imagine if I’d been born in 1771 instead of 1971, I’d remember where I was when I heard about the French Revolution and Trafalgar and Waterloo, to name a few. So, when I read a collection of first-hand accounts of Waterloo in The Hundred Days (compiled and edited by Antony Brett-James), I was intrigued to find a chapter about how the news reached France and Britain. I was then flabbergasted by the following account by Mrs. Boehm, the woman hosting the ball the Prince Regent was at when Wellington’s messenger arrived:

That dreadful night! Mr. Boehm had spared no cost to render it the most brilliant party of the season; but all to no purpose. Never did a party, promising so much, terminate so disastrously! All our trouble, anxiety, and expense were utterly thrown away in consequence of–what shall I say? Well, I must say it–the unseasonable declaration of the Waterloo victory! Of course, one was very glad to think one had beaten those horrid French, and all that sort of thing; but still, I always shall think it would have been far better if Henry Percy had waited quietly till the morning, instead of bursting in upon us, as he did, in such indecent haste; and even if he had told the Prince alone, it would have been better; for I have no doubt his Royal Highness would have shown consideration enough for my feelings not to have published the news till the next morning.

…After dinner was over, and the ladies had gone upstairs, and the gentlemen had joined them, the ball guests began to arrive. They came with unusual punctuality, out of deference to the Regent’s presence. After a proper interval, I walked up to the Prince, and asked if it was his Royal Highness’s pleasure that the ball should open. The first quadrille was in the act of forming, and the Prince was walking up to the dais on which his seat was placed, when I saw everyone without the slightest sense of decorum rushing to the windows, which had been left wide open because of the excessive sultriness of the weather. The music ceased and the dance was stopped; for we heard nothing but the vociferous shouts of an enormous mob, who had just entered the square, and were running by the side of a post-chaise and four, out of whose windows were hanging three nasty French eagles. In a second the door of the carriage was flung open, and, without waiting for the steps to be let down, out sprang Henry Percy–such a dusty figure!–with a flag in each hand, pushing aside everyone who happened to be in his way, darting up stairs, into the ball-room, stepping hastily up to the Regent, dropping on one knee, laying the flags at his feet, and pronouncing the words “Victory, Sir! Victory!”

The Prince Regent, greatly overcome, went into an adjoining room to read the despatches; after a while he returned, said a few sad words to us, sent for his carriage, and left the house. The royal brothers soon followed suit; and in less than twenty minutes there was not a soul left in the ballroom but poor dear Mr. Boehm and myself.

Such a scene of excitement, anxiety, and confusion never was witnessed before or since, I do believe! Even the band had gone, not only without uttering a word of apology, but even without taking a mouthful to eat. The splendid supper which had been provided for our guests stood in the dining-room untouched. Ladies of the highest rank, who had not ordered their carriages till four o’clock a.m., rushed away, like maniacs, in their muslins and satin shoes, across the Square; some accompanied by gentlemen, others without escort of any kind; all impatient to learn the fate of those dear to them; many jumping into the first stray hackney-coaches they fell in with, and hurrying on to the Foreign Office or Horse Guards, eager to get a sight of the List of Killed and Wounded.

I first read that account years ago, and it still boggles my mind. I can understand that it would suck to put down the kind of money it would take to throw a ball for the highest of London’s elite and have it all go to waste. But to still resent it, years later (her account is from 1831), when it was abundantly clear just how important Waterloo was? And the way she seems to focus on breaches of propriety above all else–Henry Percy was dusty, and he shoved people out of the way in his haste to reach the Prince Regent. One might almost think he was bearing critical news for his country’s acting head of state or something! Not to mention those ladies running out in their muslin gowns and slippers, with or without escort, all because they had brothers or sons or sweethearts with the army and wanted to know if they were still alive. How shocking! And lest you think her reaction is somehow typical of her time, the behavior of her guests belies it. Also, all the other accounts sound remarkably like what happens now in those moments we all remember–normal social barriers breaking down, everyone turning out into the streets to talk it over, etc.

We’re now just a month away from the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo. I’ll be away from the Riskies in June and July because of my family’s trip to Europe, which will include attending the battle reenactment. When I get back I’m sure I’ll have many stories to share!

(The painting illustrating this post is David Wilkie’s Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch, which the Duke of Wellington commissioned at a cost of 1200 guineas. I think it’s a more typical reaction than Mrs. Boehm’s, don’t you?)

Posted in Regency | Tagged Susanna Fraser, Waterloo, Wellington | 7 Replies