My latest Netflix find is The Bronte Sisters, a documentary about Emily, Charlotte, and Ann. I knew very little of the three sisters except that they all lived at home and their father outlived them. As it turns out, the story of the Bronte sisters is a story of how difficult life could be without modern medicine and sanitation.

Howarth, The village where the sisters grew up in Yorkshire, lacked proper sewers. Its dead were buried up on a hill which contaminated the water supply. This problem was not identified until 1850 and even then was not immediately rectified. Lots of people died as a result.

Disease was a fact of life. The Brontes had six children and all of them contracted scarlet fever at an early age. Mrs. Bronte developed cancer and died a slow and painful death. Her last words were, “Oh, God, my poor children.” Ann, the youngest, was not even two years old when her mother died.

In 1824 when Charlotte was just eight years old, she, her older sisters Marie and Elizabeth and Emily, only six, were sent to the Cowan Bridge school, a cruel and harsh place immortalized by Charlotte in Jane Eyre. A year later there was a typhus epidemic and all the girls became ill. Marie, then age 11, was the first to come home, ultimately succumbing to the illness. Elizabeth soon followed her. Charlotte and Emily survived (think of what we would have missed if they had not!)

Later, when Charlotte was teaching at Mrs. Wooley’s school (a much better place than Cowan Bridge), she arranged for Emily, then age 17, to attend. Emily, a shy and complicated person, was extremely homesick for Haworth. She went into a decline that sounded a lot like clinical depression and went home after three months.

The family’s hopes for good fortune rested on the Brontes’ one brother, Branwell, considered to be the most intelligent, most artistic, most creative. He was sent to London to attend Art school, but instead squandered his tuition money and indulged in alcohol and opium. After this, his life just slid into worse and worse addiction, embarrassing his family with bouts of public drunkeness. He died of tuberculosis at age 31 after a wasted life.

Without Branwell to depend upon, it was up to the girls to make money, but they were not very successful at anything they tried. Ann was able to keep a job as a governess longer than Charlotte’s attempt at that profession, but the young man she fell in love with died of cholera.

Charlotte decided they should set up their own school, but that attempt failed. Desperate, she came upon a set of poems Emily wrote and got the idea to have them published. Each of the sisters contributed poems, but the volume only sold a few copies. After that, Charlotte, Ann, and Emily each wrote novels and sent them to publishers. They each published books in 1847. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was the runaway success. Emily’s Wuthering Heights was considered unconventional. Ann’s Agnes Grey was based on her life as a governess.

A year later Emily died of tuberculosis, and a year after that Ann died of the same illness, leaving only Charlotte. Charlotte kept writing and in 1854 she married, finally having an opportunity for some security and stability in her life. A year later she died of tuberculosis complicated by typhoid fever and pregnancy.

All I could think of while watching this documentary was how prevalent disease and death must have been in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Can you imagine watching your wife and children dying, one after the other? How very awful!! We don’t usually dwell on the prevalence of disease and death of the Regency in our books. For good reason. It’s depressing!

I also couldn’t help but wonder what Charlotte, Emily, and Ann might have produced if they’d lived longer.

What other diseases can you think of that so easily took lives in the 1800s and not now? Do you think Charlotte and Emily could have topped Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights if they’d lived longer?

Come see what I come up with for Diane’s Blog on Thurs. I’ll be announcing my last September winner for my website contest on Tuesday. And don’t forget to check out the new eHarlequin Harlequin Historical Blog.

Book due at the end of the week! Can’t think, can’t think! It’s Deadline Days at the McCabe/McKee house, and that means the place is a mess and there is no food in the fridge. So I am falling back on my favorite deadline blog post–looking at pretty dresses from the “Random Gowns” folder on my computer. I love all of these. Which is your favorite? (and bonus points if you can tell us the time periods…)

Back next week with a proper post, I promise!

I am now on the downhill slide to writing The End on the WIP (two of the sweetest words in the writing world!), so my brain power for blog-writing is strictly limited at the moment. But I’m loving all the cat posts of the last few days, and I especially love all the support for cat rescue shown by our guest Liz Carlyle and her commenters! I do like hearing stories of everyone’s fabulous, unique, quirky pets….

I’m an equal opportunity pet owner here, two cats and two dogs who live together in (mostly) harmony. My tiny Poodle Abigail has set herself up as Pet Boss, and when they listen to her all goes smoothly. When they don’t–not so much…

This is my youngest cat, Minnie, who is about 5 or 6. She started out as an outdoor stray, who would come around for food and pets once in a while until she looked in the front window and decided this was Catopia, with soft cat beds, food in bowls all the time, squeaky toys, and clean litter boxes. Then she was determined she wouldn’t stop until she lived in the house all the time. She is my sweet lap-sitter and keyboard-tapper, but she does let Abigail bully her! She would be the shy debutante in a Regency (unlike my late, lamented, brilliant Siamese mix Diana, who would have been a bossy Almack’s patroness…)

And this is my old boy Gilbert, who is about 14! He was found by a friend of mine living behind a dumpster, poor baby, and when her spoiled cat took against him I let him come live with me. I love him dearly. He’s a beautiful gray striped kitty with a white paw, he loves Gilbert & Sullivan songs (especially The Mikado!) and has always spent most of his time sleeping on the bed, recovering from his hard kitten-hood. He is very cautious and affectionate. I think he would be the crotchety old man with gout sitting in the corner of the ballroom complaining about young people these days.

All of this cat business made me think of one of the most famous felines in English history–Samuel Johnson’s cat Hodge (who has his own statue now outside Johnson’s house!). Most of what we know about Hodge (who ate mostly oysters fetched from market by Johnson himself) comes from Boswell, of course. Here is a passage about Hodge from his Life of Samuel Johnson:

“Nor would it be just, under his head, to omit the fondness which he showed for animals which he had taken under his protection. I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters…I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, ‘Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;’ and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.'”

After he died, Hodge was eulogized by Johnson’s neighbor Peter Stockdale, who wrote “Who, by his master when caressed, warmly his gratitude expressed, and never failed his thanks to purr, when’er he stroked his sable fur”

Who is your favorite historical cat (or modern-day cat)?? Do you have any favorite animals in novels? (I admit that when I start a book with an animal character, I have to skip to the end to make sure nothing happens to it before I continue…)

With the return of (slightly) cooler weather, the appearance of Halloween items in Target, and lots of writing work to get done by the end of the year, I’ve sadly had to give up most of my slothful summer TV watching. Not that I’ve backed away from the remote control altogether of course–not with 2 of my very favorite shows on! Vampire Diaries had its season premiere last week, and Mad Men is more than halfway through season 4 (now officially Best Season Ever!). And I realized something as I watched Don Draper dragging himself up out of the muck on Sunday–all this TV time is not wasted. I’ve learned a valuable lesson from these 2 shows, one to apply to my own writing.

On the surface, Vampire Diaries and Mad Men are very different shows. “Young” vamps, humans, witches (and whatever Tyler is now) in a (supposedly) Southern town, falling in love, getting into terrible danger, violent events, and wearing cool clothes, and 1960s ad execs in New York falling in and out of love (sort of), getting into danger with internal demons and societal expectations, and wearing cool clothes. But they have one vital characteristic in common–nothing ever turns out like you expect. It’s always better, deeper, darker, more shocking. I don’t often shout at the TV, but I’ve recently done it with both these shows. “OMG, Damon didn’t kiss Elena, it was Katherine!” and “OMG, Betty opened the drawer!” Did not see those coming.

Where Vampire Diaries is very fast-paced, with vital plot twists in every episode and characters killed right and left, and Mad Men is famous for the slow burn (things build and build until we’re stunned by how it all explodes), these unexpected twists always come from the characters themselves. They’re never really out of left field, the actions and events arise from the characters’ flaws and secrets and desires. We’re not knocked over the head with how we’re supposed to think and feel about the characters, we’re allowed to figure things out on our own; no character is ever all good or all bad, but made of shades of gray.

These are also both very character-centered shows, as any romance novel centering on human relationships must be, and I like to think about plots in a Mad Men sort of way (not that Don Draper is any sort of hero!). What’s the unexpected twist, the sudden action, the mystery that arises from all we’ve learned about the characters and decisions they’ve made about themselves and what they want? What would they do when the moment of truth arrives, what is true for them and not a cliche?

Now it’s your turn! What are some of your favorite shows or movies, and what have you learned from them? Do you watch Mad Men or Vampire Diaries, and what do you think of the seasons so far? Is Betty still in love with Don, for secret, and will his reform last? What is Katherine really up to in Mystic Falls?

And on this day in 1812, the Moscow fires broke out. A good time to enjoy the 1812 Overture!