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Before I announce the winner of A Perilous Journey by Gail Eastwood, I’d like to share some fun stuff I’ve learned about the history of ballooning while working on my next story, which features a Waterloo veteran turned aeronaut.

Fun Fact #1
The first creatures to fly in a balloon were a cockerel, a duck and a sheep. They ascended in a Montgolfiere (hot air balloon, named after the brothers who invented it) in 1783, with an audience that included Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. I have heard that the sheep was taken to live on Marie Antoinette’s farm, but I haven’t been able to verify that story.

Hot air balloons were kept aloft by burning straw, old shoes and rancid meat, which must have had a delightful smell. Because there were no fuels at the time that could burn for long flights, hydrogen balloons became more popular for a time.

Fun Fact #2
The first unmanned hydrogen balloon, created by the scientist Jacques Charles, took off in 1783, after the first hot air balloon flights. On landing it was said to have been destroyed by peasants with pitchforks who were frightened by the strange creature that hissed and spewed noxious gas. Pure hydrogen is odorless, but the process of creating it involved pouring “vitriolic” (sulfuric) acid over iron shavings. When I consulted a chemist, she told me that the process would  have been imperfect. She concurred with my guess that the result may have smelled like rotten eggs.

Fun Fact #3
The first aeronauts to cross the English channel were a Frenchman, Blanchard, and an American, Dr. Jeffries. They departed from England on the 7th of January, 1795. They found themselves losing altitude over the water, possibly because the balloon was overloaded or because the cold had cooled the hydrogen, or a combination of the two. To avoid landing in the Channel, they had to ditch all non-essential items. This included most of their clothing.

Fun Fact #4
Blanchard’s and Jeffries’ problems were not over with crossing the Channel. They began to descend again over dense woods south of Calais. As landing in trees is not advisable, they once again had to lighten the load. Since they had ditched just about everything, they decided to pee their way out of danger!

I hope this was interesting. Which (if any) of these facts do you think I’m using in my own balloonist story?

And now for the winner of Gail Eastwood’s giveaway…

Congratulations to Ruth!

Please email me at elena @ elenagreene.com (no spaces) to let me know whether you prefer Nook or Kindle, and which email address you’d like Gail to use in setting up your order.

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

I’ve just returned from a busy but fun vacation that ended with two lovely days with my dear friend and fellow Regency author Gail Eastwood. We spend the first of those days touring just a few of the famous homes in or near Newport, Rhode Island.
We began with the Breakers, the home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, commissioned in 1893 and the most imposing of all the Newport mansions. Here Gail and I are posing on the terrace overlooking the water. And here’s a picture of the Great Hall by CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia. 
 
I found the tour very interesting, but I have to admit the style of the Breakers did not appeal to me. Although I like ornamentation, I prefer designs that allow some resting places for the eye. At the Breakers the goal seems to have been to give every available surface some sort of special treatment.  It just seemed like Too Much. But the Gilded Age was the era that coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption”.
Comparing the Breakers with homes I’d toured in England, my impression is that the goal of houses like the Breakers was more the display of wealth than taste. In my favorite English homes, I like to think the designs were inspired not only by a desire to demonstrate good taste but a genuine love of beauty as well. 
Gail told me I’d probably find many of the other Newport mansions gaudy, so she suggested we visit Rosecliffnext. According to the online guide, “Commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs in 1899, architect Stanford White modeled Rosecliff after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of French kings at Versailles.” We agreed that the more restrained style was more elegant but also very romantic.
Our modern sensibilities still don’t easily embrace the idea of a family living in a home vastly greater than their needs, with an army of servants to keep it up.  It does make more sense if one considers the scope of their entertaining. In fiction, the house party stories like Gail’s recent reissue, An Unlikely Hero, need this sort of grand setting.
I don’t have problems with fictional heroes and heroines living this lifestyle as long as they treated those who lived and worked on the estate kindly. To have them question this arrangement would feel anachronistic without the right setup, perhaps an unusual upbringing that would have been considered revolutionary (probably not in a good way).  
Nevertheless, I’m glad that famous houses in England and elsewhere are now opened up as museums. I’m glad they’re also used as public spaces for concerts, weddings and other functions.  It seems right to me that those without the means to live in such over-the-top settings can still enjoy them now and then.
Our final stop was Green Animals. The house is relatively modest, decorated in Victorian style but cozy rather than overdone. The real star of this property is the garden populated with topiary animals. We were lucky to make it there for the last hour and tour the garden, bathed in late afternoon sunshine, though we heard rumbles of thunder from the north.
Learn more about the Newport mansions and other estates at www.newportmansions.org.
Have you ever toured the Newport mansions or anything similar? What did you think?
I asked my younger son to draw the name for the winner of the free copy of The Lady From Spain. The one he pulled was Karen H. in NC!

Congratulations, Karen! I guess it really was worth the extra postings, eh? I am off at the New Jersey Romance Writers “Put Your Heart in a Book” Conference this weekend and am away from my computer, so if I don’t find a moment and a method to get the book to you this weekend, please be patient, and I’ll take care of it as soon as I get home!

Thank you, everyone, for your comments on the cover art, and thanks again to those of you who entered the drawing. So sorry you couldn’t all win! I hope you’ll consider trying one of my books, anyway, if you haven’t read one before. If you’re curious, you can find info about each of them on my website, www.gaileastwoodauthor.com.

 
Gail Eastwood
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