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Questions from Bertram St James

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Good day! Bertram St James, at your service. As I might have mentioned before, I’m not from your time. Not by quite a bit, actually. 1812 was my year…that is, until a few days ago. (And a fine year it was, too. Excellent vintage. Turned out the best-dressed men ever seen, if I do say so myself. And I do.)

This is a drawing of me. You see how forward-thinking my fashion sense is. Always ahead of my time.

Until now. Now I fear I’m behind the times. I have just a few friendly questions, as I get my bearing in the year 2005:

1. Why do men wear so few garments? And why are they so large and shapeless? Have the Puritans taken control of government again?

2. If the Puritans are in power, why do the women wear so little? Can it be that I find myself in a land populated entirely by Puritan men, and courtesans? Or are all the women freethinkers instead?

3. How can breakfasts be so affordable, and yet duels so few? I have long thought that only the exorbitant cost of buying breakfast for oneself, one’s seconds, one’s opponent’s seconds, the doctor, and one’s heartily apologetic opponent, kept the number of duels so low. And yet this morning I discovered a public house called “Denny’s” with prices so low I feared for my life every time I inadvertantly stared aghast at yet another man wearing a badly mended tent.

4. What in heaven’s name is wrong with the tea in this century????

As ever, your faithful servant,
Bertram St James, Exquisite

Humor, anyone?

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As you may have guessed from reading some of my previous posts, most of my favorite romances are of the dark, angsty variety. I’m a sucker for drama and deep emotion! But I also sometimes have things going on in my life where a bit more–lightness is called for. A good laugh. This past week has been a long one, and it definitely called for a little reading-on-the-light-side. So, I combed once again through my keeper shelves in search of favorite humorous reads.

Now, by “humourous” I don’t mean not-as-well-written, because, IMO, it’s a lot harder to write “funny” than it is to write “angsty” (as one of my old drama profs always said “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”) Humor is also extremely subjective. What is drop-dead hilarious to one person leaves another one just annoyed. I grew up in a family where Monty Python was considered the peak of humor–it’s not funny unless it has a silly song somewhere in it. And this is still the kind of humor I still prefer, witty, odd, a bit on the goofball side–like when the Pythons dress up like British housewives and talk in falsetto. This can be hard to capture in a novel, just as (again IMO) slapstick is well nigh impossible. But funny conversation, ridiculous situations, mistaken identities–all these can be terrific.

These are a few favorite funnies I found on that keeper shelf. A couple interesting things–I don’t keep nearly as many light books as dark ones, and there were far more trads than historicals. But these are all titles I loved.

1) MY LADY’S SECRET by Cindy Holbrook (she had several funny books, as I recall, but for some reason this is the only one on my shelf. I probably loaned the rest to my deadbeat cousin and never got them back)
2) THE PIRATE NEXT DOOR by Jennifer Ashley (who knew pirates–aside from Johnny Depp–could be so much fun?)
3) MISTLETOE MAHEM by Kate Huntington (I adore funny Christmas Regencies, and this one is a gem. Sophisticated, clotheshorse heroine who doesn’t much like rugrats falls for a man who is guardian to a slew of them. Holiday hijinks ensue.)
4) Several by the queen of Regency comedy, Barbara Metzger, including MINOR INDISCRETIONS, SAVED BY SCANDAL, and SNOWDROPS AND SCANDALBROTH
5) WHAT CHLOE WANTS by Emma Jensen (bounciest heroine EVER, but it’s cute)
6) MUTINY AT ALMACK’S by Judith Lansdowne
7) THE IDEAL BRIDE by Nonnie St. George
8) MISTRESS by Amanda Quick (plus a few others–this was just the one that stuck in my mind)

Now, I’m curious–what makes you laugh? What makes you groan in abject annoyance? And what are some favorite funny reads (so I can go look for them)? (And this is my newest cover, transformed into Hello Kitty in Luv by the wonders of photoshop. Hopefully good for a laugh)

As the World Turns

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Speaking of Trafalgar, I can’t believe it has been 200 years. I haven’t really been thinking of the Regency as being so long ago–no idea why. But time does slip away. I’ve noticed more and more that events I lived through are being seen as old history by my younger friends. I am old enough to critique costumes and attitudes of the sixties if anyone wants to reenact the time. I even have a clue about the 5o’s, although from a very short perspective. 😉

I still have this thing about artificially faded jeans. They bug me. Worn jeans should be truly worn. I had pairs that were worn tissue thin in the knees, and when they ripped, I patched them. And wear patterns were very distinctive. Wear occurred in the knees primarily, to a lesser extent in the derriere. Men wore the imprint of their wallets in their rear pockets. Pronounced wear did not occur on the thighs and some other odd areas where mechanically faded and worn jeans make them (keeping in mind that I grew up in northern New York, not ranching country). And…worn jeans did not take on that brownish tinge unless the owner didn’t wash them regularly! Whenever I see worn jeans in stores with that “tea stained” look, I automatically think they look as though the owner wasn’t clean.

You tie-dyed your own T-shirts. You wore the same pair of Hurache sandals until they were falling apart. The Peace Symbol meant something. No one was trying to be a fashion statement unless you were square, and then you dressed like Jackie Kennedy or Twiggy (women!) or if you were male, your hair was very short and you wore glasses with the black plastic rims.

The idea that rock groups would age was funny. Remember that bar scene in Star Wars with the gray-haired rock band? That was hilarious when the movie was new.

I don’t know why I am saying all this–I’m just trying, I think, to show how we look through a distorted lens when we look back. We can’t truly know how people of a time looked or acted or felt or spoke. We can only do as much research as we can and be careful of our sources, especially if the source is another historian’s work or a movie of the time. Diaries, on the other hand, are more helpful…and not enough people write on paper these days! I worry that all the electronic evidence will be lost, and generations from now people will be struggling to understand what this time was all about.

Comments?

And by the way, back to the subject of Trafalgar, I thought I’d provide this link to Nelson’s Navy–Life in the 18th Century Royal Navy. Great Britain’s Channel 4 has some great history pages.
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/nelson.html

Be sure to check out the Georgian Underworld too, by the way…
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/G/georgian_underworld/index.html

Laurie

Dishy Non Sequitur

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It’s Sunday, I’ve only had one cup of coffee, I’m sitting here in my jack-o-lantern jammies while my son eats cocoa pebbles. . . In other words, uninspired. So I thought I’d post one of my favorite things: Chris Cornell. He was the lead singer of Soundgarden, one of those ’90s grunge bands, had his own record, and is now the singer for Audioslave, which is the band Rage Against The Machine with a new singer (him). Way more than you wanted to know, but my gosh–look at that chest! And he usually performs shirtless! Do you blame him?

I’m feeling more inspired now.

Megan

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