Tag Archives: Diane Gaston

A Regency Trip to the Met

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

When I was in New York City for the Romance Writers of America annual conference, one of the highlights was a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a group of friends, fellow members of the Beau Monde and Regency writers all. We spent the whole day in the museum.

First priority was a special exhibit on The Art of London Firearms, featuring firearms collected by The Prince Regent, later George IV.

This 1789 portrait by Sir William Beechey opened the exhibit. And, according to the Met, the Prince Regent was an excellent shot and an avid collector of firearms.

Here is a set of the Prince’s dueling pistols and their description:

A nice surprise at this exhibit was this 1815 gentleman’s navy wool tailcoat.

Next we wound up in a musical instruments section of the museum and among other beautiful instruments, we saw this early Italian pianoforte (1740) by the inventor of the pianoforte, Bartolomeo Cristofori.

On to the painting exhibits, there were surprisingly few items of British art, but there were these two treasures:

Turner is one of my favorite British artists, so that was a real treat.

After a lovely, relaxing lunch in the fine dining room of the museum, we went in search of the room from Lansdowne House in London that Victoria Hinshaw said was acquired by the Met and on display. What a treat, we thought, to be able to see something she’d just talked about in her presentation on London mansions for the Beau Monde conference the day before. We walked through room after room of mostly French stuff until finally asking one of the museum guards. Turns out it was removed for renovation! Here, though, is what we might have seen, courtesy of Laurie Benson, my fellow Harlequin Historical author.

That was it!!! After a visit to the gift shop we were off to dinner!

Posted in Diane Gaston, History, Places, Regency, Research, Risky Regencies | Tagged Diane Gaston, Firearms, george iv, Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1 Reply

Fox Hunting in Regency England

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

“One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), A Woman of No Importance, act 1.

I first wrote about fox hunting in 2014, but the air has finally turned brisk here in Virginia and autumn leaves are finally turning. November would have been the start of the fox hunting season in Regency England. Pursuing the “uneatable” was a popular sport among Regency gentlemen and the fox hunting season would have lasted until right before spring planting. Fox hunting has a long history in Britain, dating back to the 16th century. It became especially popular after the decrease in the deer population made hunting deer more difficult.

Hunting foxes was once considered a form of vermin control. Foxes were notorious for attacking small livestock, but by Regency times, the main purpose of the hunt was the sheer sport of it. Hounds were bred specifically for fox hunting. Gentlemen kept up to 12 hunters, horses bred for the hunt, so they could hunt six days in a row, using two horses per hunt. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington kept eight horses and hunted frequently while on the Peninsula.

Hunting was the sport of wealthy gentlemen partly because those gentlemen had the wide expanse of land that the hunting required. Others could only hope to be invited to the hunt. Unauthorized hunting anywhere was considered poaching and could incur severe penalties.

Regency times were times of house parties during which gentlemen rode to the hounds and only a very few ladies did. Ladies were encouraged to ride out with the hunters or to watch the hunt from carriages.

Fox hunting was outlawed in Great Britain in 2005 but still exists in other countries including Australia and the USA.

I love the idea of galloping over the countryside on horseback, but to chase a fox and have it torn to bits, not at all. We have a fox that lives in the woods behind us of whom I am rather fond. I understand the appeal hunting game animals, although I couldn’t do it. Could you? Do you hunt? Have you ever been fox hunting?

Posted in Diane Gaston, History, Regency, Research | Tagged Diane Gaston, fox hunting | Leave a reply

Regency Weddings, The Next Generation

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

October will be a busy month for me and my family. My daughter is getting married! So naturally, all I’ve been thinking about lately are weddings. You might think I would convince my daughter to have a Regency wedding, but – alas! – she’s always had a mind of her own. It’s too bad. A Regency wedding would have been lovely!

The Regency was a time of great drama and beauty, a time when lords and ladies were expected to marry well, but also a time when the concept of marrying for love had taken hold. From Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer to today’s Regency Romance authors, that concept of marriage for love is what we celebrate. At least my daughter’s wedding will be all about celebrating love!

Now, I was married a brazillion years ago, long before I started writing or reading Regency Romance, but after I started writing Regencies I realized I had actually had a Regency Wedding!

Here I am with my bridesmaids. Notice that our dresses are all empire-waisted. Notice the leg-o-mutton sleeves on my dress and the puffed sleeves on the bridesmaids dresses.

Now compare these dresses to two Regency Fashion Prints from the fashion magazines of 1815.

See the similarities?

I had a Regency Wedding!

Many Regency lords and ladies married in St. George’s, the church on Hanover Square in Mayfair, London.

My daughter didn’t want a church wedding, though. She wanted to be married outside in a garden. Too bad, because she might have been able to be married at the Prince Regent’s summer home, the Brighton Pavilion in Brighton Hove.

In a room like this:

Much too fussy for her, though.

But she did want a bit more fuss than those Regency couples who married in a hurry, eloping to Gretna Green, just over the border in Scotland. Here I am standing at the historic anvil. Regency couples were married “over the anvil” in Gretna Green.
No, this isn’t another wedding photo. It is me with the tour guide at Gretna Green when I visited in 2005. I’m holding a copy of The Wagering Widow which began with a Gretna Green wedding.

Here are some quick facts about Regency Weddings:

Regency brides did wear white, but they didn’t have to. In the Regency, white gowns were popular for many occasions. Other colors like pale pink and blue were also worn at weddings. The older the bride, the darker the color. Wedding dresses were worn after the wedding, too. By the time Queen Victoria became a bride and wore white, the white wedding dress was well on its way to becoming a tradition.
Weddings could take place after reading of the Banns, a license, or a special license. Banns must be read for three consecutive Sundays in the parishes of both the prospective bride and groom. A license, purchased from the bishop of the diocese, did away with the banns but the couple still had to be married in the parish church. A special license, purchased from the Archbishop of Canterbury, allowed the couple to be married in a location other than a church and without banns. Licenses were never blank; different names could not be substituted.
Scottish weddings went by different rules. In Scotland couples could be married by declaring themselves married in front of witnesses, by making a promise to marry followed by intercourse, or by living together and calling themselves married.
Weddings could not be performed by proxy. Both the bride and groom had to be present.
Ship captains could not perform marriages. Couples could be married aboard ship, but only by clergy. (How many times have you read that plot?)
Brides had wedding rings; grooms did not. The bride could give the groom a ring as a wedding gift, but it was not part of the ceremony and didn’t symbolize he was married.

Lastly, here is a photo of my husband and me on our wedding day. Aren’t we cute?

I actually am very pleased at the choices my daughter has made and I cannot wait to share the happy day with her!

Has anyone attended a Regency-themed wedding? What was the last wedding you attended like?

Posted in Diane Gaston, Risky Regencies | Tagged Diane Gaston, Gretna Green, Regency romances, regency wedding dress, Regency Weddings | 1 Reply

Remembrance Day, Remembered

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

I originally posted this on November 10, 1914. I’m adapting it today, because….We need to remember!

Today is November 11, Veteran’s Day, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and the 101th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. In the UK and the Commonwealth, November 11 is known as Remembrance Day.

888,246 Commonwealth lives were lost in World War I. 888,246. that’s a staggering number. Can you imagine? Everyone in the UK must have been personally affected by that war.

In 2014, the UK marked Remembrance Day in a truly remarkable way. At the Tower of London 888,246 ceramic poppies were planted, one for each life lost. The poppies could be purchased for 25 pounds each and will be sent to the donors in January.

I visited the Tower of London in September 2014 and saw the poppies that had been planted in the moat so far.
You can see the individual poppies in this photo.

By November 11 the whole moat was filled. The poppies bled from a bastion window, arced above the Tower’s medieval causeway, flowed over the top of the walls and fill the moat with a sea of crimson.

The idea for this art project came from this poem:

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

The blood swept lands and seas of red,
Where angels dare to tread.
As God cried a tear of pain as the angels fell,
Again and again.
As the tears of mine fell to the ground
To sleep with the flowers of red
As any be dead
My children see and work through fields of my
Own with corn and wheat,
Blessed by love so far from pain of my resting
Fields so far from my love.
It be time to put my hand up and end this pain
Of living hell. to see the people around me
Fall someone angel as the mist falls around
And the rain so thick with black thunder I hear
Over the clouds, to sleep forever and kiss
The flower of my people gone before time
To sleep and cry no more
I put my hand up and see the land of red,
This is my time to go over,
I may not come back
So sleep, kiss the boys for me

Today in the UK, think of the 888,246 lives represented in the Tower’s moat in 2014. Think, as well, of the 116,516 American dead in WWI. Or the one and a half million American lives lost in war beginning with our Civil War. Think of all the soldiers who have died in wars.

And honor them.

Do you have a particular person to remember on Veteran’s Day? Mine is my father, Col. Daniel J. Gaston, who spent a whole career in the army.

Posted in Diane Gaston, History, Holidays, Research | Tagged Diane Gaston, Veterans Day, WWI | 2 Replies

I’ve always loved Persuasion

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

I came late to loving the Regency, not until I started writing in 1995. I’d read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in some English class along the way, but it wasn’t until my writing pals Helen and Julie introduced me to Georgette Heyer and Regency Romance (the Signets and Zebras) that I began to really fall in love with the Regency.

One event clinched it.

Helen, Julie, and I went to see the 1995 Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds movie Persuasion, which had been a BBC TV production in the UK but released in theaters in the US. It was this movie adaptation of a Jane Austen book I’d never read that made the Regency come alive for me.

From the country house of the Elliots to the chic rooms in Bath to the simple seaside abode of the Harviles, the Regency world the move depicted seemed so real to me. Maybe it was because the whole movie was filmed on location, but, even so, the details were not prettied up for film. The livery of the Elliot footmen looked a bit shabby, as it would have for a baronet whose fortunes were dwindling. Skirts and boots got muddy during country walks, as they would have in a time without paved walkways. The dancing was boisterous but not polished and practices, as professional dancers would have performed. The hero and heroine were attractive but not “beautiful people.”

The Regency people in the story also acted in ways I believed were true to the period. The emphasis on status, on honor and obligation seemed genuine to me. There were bored privileged young women, proud impoverished ones, scheming social climbers. There were also “normal” people, like the Musgroves and the Crofts. And Ann and Wentworth, of course.

Jane Austen may have been exploring the role of persuasion throughout the story, but she also crafted a lovely, satisfying romance, with familiar Romance themes. Persuasion is both a reunion story (Ann and Captain Wentworth were once betrothed) and a Cinderella story (Ann, the put-upon sister finds great love in the end). The conflict was poignant – Ann regretted breaking her betrothal to Wentworth; Wentworth remained bitter that she threw him off in order to seek better prospects.

There’s a lovely villain in Ann’s cousin, William Elliot, who becomes intent on courting her, and more complications ensue when Wentworth considers himself obligated to marry the injured Louisa Musgrove. The steps Ann and Wentworth each make to find their way back to each other are subtle, but very satisfying and very typical of romance novels of today.

After seeing the movie, I had a picture in my mind that was my Regency. I read Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice and all of Jane Austen’s books, even Lady Susan. Persuasion is one of the few books I’ve read more than twice. I’ve watched the movie more times than that. The social attitudes from Jane Austen’s books seeped into my brain, as did the language, the rhythm of the conversation.

So you might say Jane Austen helped create my Regency world! And now I’ve decided to write my own Persuasion story. It is just the germ of an idea right now, but, if all goes well, it should be for sale late this year or early next year.

It will be my homage to Jane Austen and her wonderful book, Persuasion.

(I adapted this blog from an earlier one written in 2012)