Today is the anniversary of the date that resonates in English people’s minds the way 1776 does here, a rather grandiose way of saying that it’s one date most people probably know: October 14, 1066. The Battle of Hastings was the last invasion of England when a French Norseman, William the Conqueror, invaded, walloped the Saxon nobility and the King, and took over the country, changing the language and introducing snails as the national dish. There are many sites about this so I can promise you much time-wasting lies ahead of you should you wish to pursue it.
One of the most remarkable pieces of art in the world is the Bayeux Tapestry, which records the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself. It’s not actually a tapestry, but is embroidery on linen, eight pieces joined to a massive piece about 20″ tall and 230′ long. Legend has it that it was created by William’s wife Matilda and it’s sometimes referred to still as la tapisserie de la reine Mathilde. More likely it was commissioned by William’s half brother Bishop Odo and made by monks in the south of England.
The original is on display in France and there is a Victorian copy in the museum of my home town, Reading.
Today I’m all over the blogosphere talking about my fictional second invasion by the French in 1797 when Jane Austen was a vampire, Jane and the Damned. There’s a review and a guest blog at Book Faery and a discussion at Austen Authors on what Jane Austen was really like.
You can still enter the contest at Vampchix to win a copy of Bespelling Jane Austen.
As most of you probably know, the English drink tea. Tea was introduced in England after 1650. I’m sure that most of us have read a historical in which the phrase “a dish” of tea is used rather than the more familiar “cup” of tea. This site tells us that the first tea cups were Chinese in origin and were shallow saucers, and did not have handles. From the same site:
100 years after the introduction of tea in England, handles were not yet seen on tea cups, but English potters had introduced saucers to the bowls. The tea-drinkers thought the saucer was there to pour the tea into to cool it and then they would sip the tea from the saucer. Later the saucer was used to hold spillage and the use of the cup and saucer became the tradition used today with the addition of handles.
Britain Express has a good overview of the history of tea and coffee houses. Tea was taxed by 1676. A hundred years later, we know how that taxation thing worked for the British when they were across the pond. According to this site, the tax rose to 119% and guess what?! Tea smuggling, that’s what. And guess what else! People put stuff that wasn’t tea in the tea. What’s that thing the French say about change and the same old thing?
My favorite tea ever is Lapsang Souchang. I love the smoky flavor. At work, however, I drink Lipton. It gets my day going. What about you guys? Do you drink tea? What kind? If you were a tea smuggler where would you hide your tea?
Welcome to the second Spooky Tuesday of October! As I was looking around online and in library books for suitable Halloween-ish material for this month, there was way too much to choose from. Today we’ll look at some Ghosts of Famous People, next week some unusual apparitions….
The Tudors provide an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the spirit world. All of them seem to haunt one (or several) places, with lots of shrieking and carrying of heads and things like that. We’ll start by taking a look at some of them:
Hampton Court is rumored to be haunted by at least two of Henry VIII’s wives, Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour. Wife five, Catherine was charged with adultery and placed under house arrest at Hampton Court. The story says that one day she broke free from her guarded rooms and ran down the gallery to try and reach her husband to plead for her life while he was at prayer in the chapel. She was soon retrieved by the guards and dragged back to her rooms, kicking and screaming. Sometimes she can still be heard, and even seen, running and shrieking down the gallery. Ernest Law’s A Short History of Hampton Court (1897) says she runs “towards the door of the Royal Pew, and just as she reaches it, has been observed to hurry back with disordered garments and a ghastly look of despair, uttering at the same time the most unearthly shrieks, till she passes through the door at the end of the gallery.” In 1999 two women on separate tours on the same evening fainted at the same spot in the gallery and declared they suddenly felt frightened. There’s even a rumored video of a “ghost” (possibly Catherine), but I do wonder why the ghost seems able to close the doors so carefully…
Jane Seymour, wife three, is a much more placid ghost (as she was probably a more placid person in life!). She walks through the cobbled courtyard carrying a lighted candle and disappears into a wall.
Anne Boleyn is probably the most active of the Tudor wives, and the most dramatic! She is seen at the Tower, with numerous tales of sitings by guards and tourists. She walks near the White Tower, close to the place where the scaffold was erected, and in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula where she is buried (sometimes she even leads processions of the executed up the aisle). At Hever Castle she’s seen in the gardens, and on a bridge over the River Eden on Christmas Eve. It’s also said that every year on May 19, the anniversary of her death, a black coach drawn by four black horses races up to Blickling Hall with Anne sitting inside with her head on her lap. The coach stops and she gets out and disappears into the house….
Mary Queen of Scots is one of busiest ghosts in all of England. She seems to haunt every place she ever lived in or even passed by one day. She haunts Stirling Castle, where she’s a sort of pinkish shadow; Borthwick Castle, where she appears in disguise in boy’s clothes (a disguise she used to escape her captors there); Loch Leven Castle; Hermitage Castle in the Borders (she never stayed there, but Bothwell did once); Craignethan Castle; Holyroodhouse (where the blood stain of Rizzio still can’t be washed away…); Bolton Castle; Turret Castle; and the Talbot Hotel in Oundle, which houses the staircase from the demolished Fotheringhay Castle, which she walked down to her execution. It makes me tired just thinking about how much energy all this haunting must take! (But her birthplace at Linlithgow Castle is only haunted by her mother, Marie of Guise)
Castle Rising was built in the 12th century, and for a time (1330-1358) was the home/prison of Queen Isabella, “the She-Wolf” of France. Isabella was the wife of Edward II, and it was said she and her lover Roger Mortimer had the king murdered, and her son then imprisoned her at Castle Rising. It wasn’t quite as dour as that–she lived in her accustomed royal luxury with a full household, but it was said she descended into dementia as she aged and spent her last troubled years locked in the upper story rooms. She died in August 1358, and then came back to the castle. Visitors have reported hearing her shrieking and laughing on the top floor, and residents in the nearby village say they can hear her screams and laughter at night as well.
Moving ahead to the Regency, George IV is said to be haunting his Pavilion in Brighton, the place he loved so much he just couldn’t leave it. In Richard Jones’s Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland, “It is said that his ghost can still be seen walking the underground passages that link the Pavilion to the Dome. This building at the time was the Royal stables and is now used as a concert and exhibition center. He has also been seen in the tunnel linking the old cellars to the nearby pub the Druid’s Head…” (I think Diane and I actually ate at the Druid’s Head on the Splendors of the Regency tour, at those tables outside with some other friends! If I’d known Prinny was hanging around I would have shared my fish and chips with him)
Ham House in Richmond is rumored to be haunted by Elizabeth, the Duchess of Lauderdale, who taps her cane along the floors. It’s also strangely haunted by one of Charles II’s spaniels…
Speaking of Charles II, Nell Gywn is said to haunt Salisbury Hall and also the Gargoyle Club on Dean Street, where her house once stood (her presence is signaled by a strong scent of gardenias and a glimpse of a gray, shadowy figure)
At Byron’s family home of Newstead Abbey, there’s said to be another canine spirit, that of the poet’s Newfoundland Boatswain, who is buried on the estate under an elaborate monument. This is the verse on his obelisk: “NEAR this spot/Are deposited the Remains/of one/Who possessed Beauty/Without Vanity/Strength without Insolence/Courage without Ferocity/And all the Virtues of Man/Without his Vices/This Praise, which could be unmeaning flattery/If inscribed over Human Ashes/Is but a just tribute to the Memory of/”Boatswain” a Dog/Who was born at Newfoundland/May 1803/And died at Newstead Abbey/Nov. 18 1808″
Hall Place, whose earliest sections date to the 14th century, is haunted by the Black Prince (1330-1376), who is said to have courted his wife Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, there and appears in his dark armor as a harbinger of bad fortune. In the Evening Post of November 29, 1924, an article appeared that declared “Black Prince’s Ghost Said to Have Warned Britain”. Lady Limerick says in this article, “The last time I saw the ghost was on a Sunday evening. The figure was standing by the fireplace in the morning room, and when I went into the room with a friend it glided away through the window into the garden…Sometimes there have been faint sounds of music.”
One weird little story I came across says that in the 1830s, when Wellington was Prime Minister and quite unpopular for his opposition to the Reform Bill, the ghost of Cromwell appeared to him at Apsley House and warned him to let the Bill through Parliament. The Bill passed in 1832. Why Cromwell thought to bother himself with it I don’t know.
These are a lot of ghosts, but they are just the tip of the spirit iceberg! Now it’s your turn. If you could meet the ghost of anyone at all, and actually have a coherent (non-scary) conversation with them, who would you choose? What would you ask them? And which of these ghosts would make the best Halloween costume???
These last few days have seemed like autumn here in Virginia. We’ve had brisk, sunny days and cool nights. Leaves are falling, even though the trees are still stubbornly green.
On 19 September 1819, John Keats took an evening walk along the River Itchen near Winchester and was inspired to write one of the most perfect poems in the English language:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Here’s the poem read by Ben Whishaw, the actor who played Keats in the movie, Bright Star:
I think the imagery in To Autumn is just beautiful, giving the mood of autumn as well as the sights and sounds.
The poem was included in volume of Keats’ works printed in 1820 to better reviews than his earlier works. A year later, Keats died.
You could say he wrote the poem in the autumn of his young life.
Last Friday Megan asked about fall vegetables, so I’ll ask this: If you took a walk near your house, like Keats did, what would catch your eye? What’s your favorite part about being outdoors in autumn?
Today we welcome Miranda Neville as guest blogger with a copy of her latest release THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT to offer as a prize. Your question or comment will enter you into the drawing and Miranda will drop in during the day to chat. And now, over to Miranda…
When I helped my father move out of my childhood home, he asked me to go through a box of family papers. Along with my grandfather’s World War I diaries, I discovered a curious volume listing family members and friends and their weights. Investigation revealed that for seventy years, beginning in 1850, there had been a weighing scale in the hall of the family house in Norfolk, England. After reeling with gratitude that the practice of weighing visitors had ceased long before my time, I decided I needed to put this piece of lunacy in a book.
THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT is, among other things, a book about opposites attracting. Sebastian Iverley is a bookworm, a real Regency nerd and a misogynist to boot. Diana Fanshawe is a girly girl. She loves parties and fashion and worries about her weight. And she knows about her weight, even without the chart of Recommended Weights For Women (I hate that chart, but I digress), because her eccentric father has a scale in the hall and insists on weighing his friends and relations.
I had to find out what the scale should look like. The St. James’s Street wine merchant, Berry Brothers & Rudd, still exists from the Regency. Gentlemen (including Byron) used their scale—shown here in a photo from their website–to weigh themselves, but it’s obviously a commercial machine. With a little research I figured out what kind of contraption Diana’s father might have owned.
Then, in one of those bits of serendipity that occur in writing, I was researching a scene set in Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. Beau Monde member Anke Fontaine produced an engraving which includes – a weighing machine! And it was pretty much as I had described it three hundred pages earlier.
Unable to avoid her father, Diana submits to being weighed and there’s a witness to her humiliation. Luckily it isn’t Blakeney, the hunky ducal heir she has her eye on. It’s only Blake’s nerdy cousin Sebastian and who cares what he thinks?
“Up you get, my dear,” Mr. Montrose ordered. She looked around as though contemplating flight, then climbed into the swinging chair.
Watching her father conduct some business with blocks of metal hanging from a horizontal bar, Sebastian realized the device was a weighing machine.
“Eight stone, two pounds,” Mr. Montrose announced. “Let me see.” He picked up a vellum bound volume from a small table and flipped through the pages. “Five pounds more than last time.”
“I’m wearing a riding habit. This cloth is very heavy,” she said.
Her father wagged his finger at her then pointed at the entry in the ledger. “None of that. Last time you wore a winter gown and full-length fur-trimmed pelisse. See? You made me record it in the book.” He dipped a pen in an inkwell kept handy for the task and entered his daughter’s new weight.
Although not in the habit of judging people’s emotional reactions—men, thank God, didn’t have them—Sebastian noticed Lady Fanshawe looked as though she were about to cry. Was she, for some reason, upset about the increase in her weight? He couldn’t imagine why. He found her figure absolutely perfect. Its diminution by even an ounce would be a sad loss.
Though things like counting calories and the science of nutrition were in the future, people of the period did go on reducing diets. The most famous is probably Byron’s regime of vinegar and mashed potatoes. Diana wants to lose the extra inches from her bust so I invented a couple of diets for her, including one in which she eats nothing but dessert. (That one isn’t a great success).
Despite her appalling obesity (I’d pay good money to weigh only eight stone two [114 pounds]!) Sebastian falls for her. She is totally not interested (in addition to all his other disadvantages her mother likes him). Trying to impress the future duke, Diana bets Blake she can get Sebastian to kiss her and Sebastian is devastated when he finds out about the wager. With the help of his friends in the Burgundy Club, he gets a makeover, transforms himself into an eligible London bachelor, and plots to seduce her. Stuff happens, yadda yadda yadda, and they live happily ever after. If you want to know whether Diana loses the weight you’ll have to read the book.
What’s the oddest thing from your own life you’ve put into a book? And if you are sensible enough not to attempt the writing of fiction, help out a desperate author by sharing an experience I can turn into an utterly improbable scene in a novel. One commenter will win a copy of THE DANGEROUS VISCOUNT.
Today I’m all over the blogosphere talking about my fictional second invasion by the French in 1797 when Jane Austen was a vampire, Jane and the Damned. There’s a review and a guest blog at Book Faery and a discussion at Austen Authors on what Jane Austen was really like.
You can still enter the contest at Vampchix to win a copy of Bespelling Jane Austen.
