Risky Regencies

Christmas 1564

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

It’s been a…challenging week around here, with ice, snow, and illness all around! so I thought I would re-post something I wrote a few years ago on the release of my Christmas-set Elizabethan book, The Winter Queen (still available in ebook!). I had so much fun research about all the great parties they had around the 12 Days of Christmas, thought you might enjoy a glimpse at it, too!

And yesterday I visited The Pink Heart Society blog, talking about my newest boyfriend–Tom Mison as Ichabod Crane! I list all the reasons everyone else should love him, too. And you can comment for a chance to win a copy of Running From Scandal…

One thing I learned as I researched my book The Winter Queen is that the Elizabethans really, really knew how to party at the holidays! The Christmas season (Christmastide) ran 12 days, from December 24 (Christmas Eve) to January 6 (Twelfth Day), and each day was filled with feasting, gift-giving (it was a huge status thing at Court to see what gift the Queen gave you, and to seek favor by what you gave her), pageants, masquerades, dancing, a St. Stephen’s Day fox-hunt, and lots of general silliness. (One of the games was called Snapdragon, and involved a bow of raisins covered in brandy and set alight. The players had to snatch the raisins from the flames and eat them without being burned. I think the brandy was heavily imbibed before this games as well, and I can guarantee this won’t be something we’re trying at my house this year!)

Later in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, she mostly kept Christmas at Greenwich, or sometimes at Hampton Court or Nonsuch Palace, but in the year my story is set, 1564, she spent the holiday at Whitehall in London. Elizabeth had only been queen for 6 years and was 31 years old, so hers was a young Court full of high spirits. This was also the coldest winter in memory, so cold the Thames froze through and there was a Frost Fair complete with skating, food and merchandise booths on the ice, and sledding. It was fun to imagine this scene, and put my characters (Lady Rosamund Ramsey, lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and Anton Gustavson, Swedish diplomat and excellent ice-skater) into the action!

Even though there were no Christmas trees or stockings hung by the fire, I was surprised to find we would recognize many of the traditional decorations of the time! Anything that was still green in December would be used–holly, ivy, yew, bay. The Yule log was lit on Christmas Eve using a bit of last year’s log saved for the purpose. It was brought in by the men of the household, decorated with wreaths and ribbons, and set ablaze so everyone could gather around and tell tales of Christmases past.

Food was also just as big a part of the holiday as it is now! Roast meats were favorites (pork, beef, chicken, fricaseed, cooked in broths, roasted, baked into pies), along with stewed vegetables and fine whit manchet bread with fresh butter and cheese. Elizabeth was a light eater, especially compared with her father, but she was a great lover of sweets. These could include candied flowers, hard candies in syrup (called suckets, eaten with special sucket spoons), Portugese figs, Spanish oranges, tarts, gingerbread, and figgy pudding. The feast often ended with a spectacular piece of sugar art called (incongrously) subtleties. In 1564, this was a recreation of Whitehall itself in candy, complete with a sugar Thames. (At least they could work off the feasting in skating and sledding…)

A couple fun reads on Christmas in this period are Maria Hubert’s Christmas in Shakespeare’s England and Hugh Douglas’s A Right Royal Christmas, as well as Alison Sim’s Food and Feast in Tudor England and Liza Picard’s Elizabeth’s London. At my website I have lots more info on the period, as well as some Renaissance Christmas recipes (let me know if you decide to try the roast peacock!)

Posted in History | 2 Replies

Winter Wonderland

Updated on December 9, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Last week I discoursed (i.e. complained) about dipping temperatures and the arrival of winter weather. Lest you think Virginia has gone into another Little Ice Age, we had temperatures near 70 F last week. This past Sunday, though, winter returned.

Like most of the Midwest and MidAtlantic, we had a winter storm. Sunday we had snow and freezing rain. Today it has turned to rain. Here’s the view of our deck. Icicles on the bird feeders!

Luckily we don’t have to leave the house. I did what all good Virginians do when winter weather is forecast. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on milk, toilet paper, cat food and assorted snacks, so we are free to hibernate–at least until the cat food runs out.

In the Regency, that is what people did in winter weather. They stayed at home and stayed as dry and warm as they could. Of course, not everyone could do that. Coaches did get caught in storms.

There are some wonderful blogs about Regency winters in Jane Austen’s World, one of my go-to sites for great information:
1. Snow Sports and Winter Transportation in the Regency Era
2. Keeping Warm in the Regency Part One and Part Two

If you are snowbound today (or even if you aren’t!) come to the Harlequin.com’s Holiday Open House. Today the Historical Authors are hosting a Holiday Ball. Come and see what refreshments are offered and what heroes are waiting to ask you to dance. There’s a chance to win prizes, too!

And don’t forget. The Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway is still progressing. Access the Advent calendar here and see how to enter my part of the contest here.

What is your favorite thing to do when winter weather shuts you in?

Posted in Giveaways, Regency | Tagged Harlequin.com, Jane Austen's World | 5 Replies

What Not to Bare: Too Sexy to Read in Public?

Updated on December 7, 2013 by megan

This past week, my book What Not to Bare was included in a Barnes & Noble post titled 4 Romance Novels Too Sexy to Read in Public. Which was awesome, since of course that is bound to pique people’s interest, particularly people who might not normally pick up a historical romance.

And while I would like to proudly read whatever I want to in public, the truth is I am grateful for e-readers, and am happy I can read whatever I like without anyone judging me. Because while the content might be awesome, the truth is that some of our covers are pretty egregious. Just think of the original covers for two of the best (if not the actual best) historical romances out there–Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels and Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm.

Blech! I like them now, because they are so awful and over-the-top, and I seem to have shed some shame as I’ m advancing in years, but imagine how people who first bought them must have felt, and have had to explain that the books inside were brilliant, even if the covers weren’t.

The worst thing about e-readers is when you have the size magnified, because of that age thing, and you can tell someone is glancing over at what you’re reading while on the subway, and you’re at a really salacious part of the book, and you have to turn off the e-reader for a bit. Not that that’s ever happened to me.

Have you ever felt judged for the books you read?

Megan

Posted in Risky Regencies | 3 Replies

We have a winner

Updated on December 6, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Congratulations Rebecca Kramer! You have won the ARC of Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard by Vanessa Kelly. Check your email.

Big thanks to everyone who visited on Thursday and if you haven’t snapped it up yet, the novella that kicks off the series, Lost in a Royal Kiss, is available on Amazon and free (at the moment) for Nook.

Posted in Winners announced | Leave a reply

On Holidays, Period Food, and What We Feed Our Characters

Updated on December 6, 2013 by Gail Eastwood

Having finally finished the clean-up from Thanksgiving (the wedding crystal goblets I have to wash by hand tend to decorate the kitchen counter for days), I am now looking ahead to the next holidays, and more meals to be planned in celebration. Special occasions and special food always go together. Do you have a traditional holiday food you make or fondly remember? For Christians, this past Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, and in some parts of England, is also known as “stir-up day” –the day you are supposed to stir-up the batter for your Christmas cake or pudding so it will have enough time to age properly. (The day can also be the last Sunday before the start of Advent.) There’s a double meaning to the name, as one of the old texts used by the church for the start of Advent begins “Stir up , we beseech thee O Lord” and one site claims “this activity of stirring-up the ingredients symbolizes our hearts that must be stirred in preparation for Christ’s birth.” Christmas cakes (aka fruitcakes) have a pedigree as long as the technique of using rum or brandy to preserve food. “Plum Pudding” was also around long before the Victorians popularized it as “Christmas pudding”. Either one could include meat with the dried fruit in their early forms, but one is baked and the other was boiled –steamed in later times.

For someone who’s not a great cook, maybe it’s ironic that I’ve always been interested in period food, but it comes honestly from my interest in the daily life of other times. The Regency isn’t my only pet period –I’m a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and indulge in medieval interests, too. I collect cookbooks on period food, and recently added Dinner with Tom Jones: Eighteenth Century Cookery Adapted for the Modern Kitchen, by Lorna Sass (1977, the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Sass also wrote To the King’s Taste (Richard II) and To the Queen’s Taste (Elizabeth I).

I can’t believe I found this treasure in my church yard sale!! I recommend it as a research gold-mine; it has notes about menus, how dishes should be arranged on the table, and all sorts of extra goodies besides the recipes, and while it covers a period slightly earlier than our beloved Regency, back then things did not change as rapidly as they do now. Casting about for what to feed our characters, a ragoo of asparagus or heavens, yes, a chocolate tart(!) might be just the thing we need to serve them. And the book is illustrated with delightful sketches of county life by Thomas Rowlandson (behaving properly for a change).

On my Christmas list is another cookbook just released last month which should also be of great interest to us all —Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler, a new addition to the existing canon related to food in Jane Austen’s books and life. Besides recipes inspired by Jane’s novels and letters, it also promises notes about table arrangements, kitchens and gardens, changing mealtimes, and servants and service, etc.

Both of these books use Hannah Glasse’s first cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), as a chief source. A reviewer of Vogler’s book (http://tinyurl.com/mlrxl6j) says this was “one of the first commercial cookbooks to capture the public imagination and was used by middle-class families like the Austens well into the 19th century.” Does food history interest you? Do you care about what our story characters eat? (The book I’m editing now for reissue, The Captain’s Dilemma, has a running joke about the family’s inventive but not very good cook.) What are some of your favorite resources?

I wish you all very happy holidays and some memorable meals with friends and family, whatever you celebrate!

Mr Collins (Tom Hollander) distracts Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) from her meal in the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ -Photo Credit: Rex Features/Everett Collection