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Home Matters

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Happy Tuesday, everyone! Hope you’re all having a great week so far. I’ve been busy with revisions, researching the next project (set at the court of Mary Queen of Scots!), getting ready for holidays, and planning some promo for my December Laurel McKee release (watch for blog tour dates, coming soon!). I’m also trying to pack to go out of town for a few days–if you happen to be in New Mexico, I’ll be doing a workshop on historical fashion at the LERA RWA chapter in Albuquerque on Saturday…

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the “Regency worlds” the other Riskies have been talking about lately, which goes along perfectly with the book I just finished reading, At Home by Bill Bryson. I love Bryson’s travel narratives (especially Notes from a Small Island about England and In a Sunburned Country about Australia), and while At Home is not as laugh-out-loud hysterical as some of his other work it’s very entertaining. Here is the starred review from Publishers Weekly:

“Bryson takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of pre-modern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events. There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson’s droll prose–“What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing”–to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are.”

So, yeah–to someone addicted to historical trivia like I am, this book was pure reading gold. I couldn’t wait to see where the narrative would go next, as it was never predictable. Most of the history here is Victorian (using the 1851 Great Exhibition as a jumping-off point) but there are looks at prehistoric Britain, early 19th century America (with Jefferson’s Monticello) and Regency England (the state of obstetrics, using poor Princess Charlotte as an example), and the Elizabethan building boom (“Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall,” plus a tantalizing anecdote about Elizabeth I pilfering silver at someone’s house). This is just barely touching the surface of everything he talks about.

But it made me realize something–“my” historical world, the one I have in my head when I read and especially when I write–is much better-lit and more comfortable than the reality. When I envision ballrooms or a family gathered in a drawing room in the evening, there is much more light than that from candles, and when the hero and heroine get to it on the bed the mattress is not too soft or too firm and it’s comfortable, no soggy feathers, crackly straw, or unwanted vermin. Everyone smells good and has pretty hair and clean underthings. And in my imagination that probably won’t change! I like to think this is how they would have seen things. But I may incorporate some of the more interesting tidbits I found in this book in stories…

Now I’m deciding what to read on my road trip! I’m thinking Meljean Brooks’ The Iron Duke, because I’ve heard such fabulous things about it and I love steampunk, and I just got the new memoirs of Deborah Mitford, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, which I am dying to delve into.

What have you been reading lately? What are some of your favorite historical anecdotes, or subjects you’d like to learn more of?

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A Particular Regency World

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Elena’s point about our own particular Regency worlds, all perhaps a bit different, made an impression on me. How true it is! Even if we were writing non-fiction, biographies or histories, we still would be putting it through the prism of our own vision. This got me thinking….

Two Victorian artists, Marcus Stone and Edmund Blair Leighton, created a romanticized Regency full of images that you might find familiar. These artists looked back in time and imagined their own idea of the Regency.

Take a look at the painting on the left, a beautiful Regency scene. It’s no surprise that this painting by Marcus Stone graced the cover of Janet’s The Rules of Gentility.

Marcus Stone started his career illustrating books for Charles Dickens, who had been a friend of Stone’s father and took an interest in 19 year old Marcus, when the elder Stone died. Late in his career, Stone specialized in these sentimental paintings that present a very pretty, idealized version of the Regency (and make the images desireable for book covers).

Here are some more of Stone’s Regency Paintings.

Edmund Blair Leighton, like Stone, was the son of an artist, but his father died when Leighton was two years old. Although he trained for a different career, art turned out to be in his blood. He specialized in historical paintings of the medieval and Regency period. His first painting was accepted at the Royal Academy.

Here are some of his romantic Regency paintings:

Yes, these paintings are very sentimental and idealized, but what I love about them is that they all tell a story. The last one is called Playing for the Reverend, but can’t you just spin a story around that one? Or the one with the naval officer. What did he say to her?

Leighton was largely forgotten as an artist, even though his paintings were very popular in their day. In fact, he painted an iconic medieval image that I’ll bet you’ve seen over and over. It’s called The Accolade.

Have you seen these images? Have you seen them on a bookcover? What’s your assessment of the Regency world they depict?

I’ll be back at my own blog on Thursday, Veteran’s Day!

And don’t forget to enter Janet’s LOL Regency contest! I’m working on my entry!

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Live Long and Prosper!

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By popular request (Amanda’s), here are my Vulcans. Note the properly stoic expressions. My older one is a science officer in Starfleet; the younger is still living on Vulcan and studying for the Starfleet Academy entrance exams. We always have a script. 🙂

We like to carve pumpkins to go with the theme. Here they are. We are rather proud of them, but we are not the only ones to do this. Googling around, I found some really amazing Star Trek themed pumpkins. I also found this Jane Austen pumpkin. Cool, no?

“Shared worlds” like Star Trek are a lot of fun. Other popular shared worlds are Oz, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the world of Harry Potter, and historical periods like the Regency.

People love these worlds so much that they create collections, go to conventions and play dress-up. They also get upset if there are inaccuracies (or perceived inaccuracies) in their portrayal. There are all sorts of reactions, from the reasonable to ones who have perhaps forgotten that this is all in fun? There are people who created online lists of every deviation from the books in Peter Jackson’s LOTR films. A friend who does Civil War reenactments has been criticized for using a machine to make her dresses.
And probably every author of Regency romance has or will hear from a reader upset over her depiction of the Regency.

Sometimes these are about real historical inaccuracies–Regency fans are extremely knowledgeable and authors can and do make mistakes, despite sincere attempts at accuracy. (It’s the stuff you didn’t realize to look up that bites you.) But I also think some readers form their notion of the Regency not from history, but from other books they’ve read, which adds to the confusion.

There are so many variations on the Regency. There’s the real historical Regency. There’s the Regency according to Jane Austen: accurate, but limited to the sorts of events and situations she experienced personally. (For instance, I read that she never wrote a scene with only male characters.) There’s a somewhat different Regency in Georgette Heyer’s books. A slightly different version again in the old traditional Regencies, and yet again with the long historicals.
There’s no other way to explain readers who think no one had sex during the Regency (I got that in an Amazon review once). Perhaps there are some now who think dukes regularly married courtesans. (Improbable, but why not?)

I find it hilarious–and also kind of charming–how many versions of the Regency authors have created. How many more peers of the Realm can the island possibly hold? Yeah, I’m guilty of adding my part. Though I do my research, I know that the world I depict is largely in my own head. I hope readers will enjoy it, too. That’s the whole point.

What do you think? have other favorite shared worlds? Did you “visit” any of them for Halloween?

Elena
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Floundering Friday

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What’s this? Carolyn is totally biting my ‘have nothing to say let’s be witty instead’ style of post?

Time for a throwdown. Only, since I tend to accept others’ premises (yes, therapists have long reminded me of that) I will likely defer to Carolyn’s superior insouciance.

So, shoot.

I got nothing.

Last week, I talked about doing NaNoWriMo; during the subsequent week, I’ve come to realize it is just not for me, but I am writing more than usual, so perhaps that is a nice side-effect of the NaNo Guilt?

I’m finishing up a short story set in the Regency about a returning soldier/viscount and the widow of his comrade. These two are quite different from the characters I’ve done in the past; the heroine is beautiful, and knows it. The hero is more beta than I think I’ve written before. He desires the heroine as soon as he meets her, but thinks she is above him. Because I’ve got nothing but my wit, here’s some of what I’ve been working on:

“What would you do if you had no responsibilities?” she asked, then immediately bit her lip as though regretting her question. Was she reading his mind? “Never mind, I should not have asked that.”

She turned with Joseph in her arms and began to set up a steady pace across the floor.

Mac’s heart hurt. “I think the prospect of no responsibilities was what led me to join the Army in the first place.” He watched as she paused before turning back towards him, maintaining the same slow walk. “But it didn’t work out that way.” He did not want to talk about himself, about what he should be doing. “What would you do?”

She met his gaze, her brown eyes narrowed in thought.

If he found her devastating when she was just being, it was nothing compared to what he thought when she was thinking. His knees actually felt weak.

“I think the same as you. No responsibilities.” She nodded to Joseph. “I’m not speaking of him.” She looked back up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I’ve just met him, and already can’t imagine life without him.”

Neither can I, Mac thought. A sudden pain hit his heart. When he left, he would be leaving Joseph. And her.

So–what would you do if you had no responsibilities?

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