Interview by Loretta Chase
Today I continue my ROYAL HARLOT interview with fellow-Wench Susan Holloway Scott. If you missed Part One, look here. ROYAL HARLOT is available everywhere now, but Susan will also be giving away a signed copy on Sunday night to someone who posted on either Part One or Part Two of this interview. We know that TypePad was a little squirrelly on Tuesday, rejecting comments; if you missed out then, please be sure to add a comment here to be eligible for the drawing.
And to get you in the proper mood, here's a Restoration-era Barbie, courtesey of Wench Susan King. Ahh, we do love our Barbies....
Loretta: Writing in the first person, you’ve created a heroine in ROYAL HARLOT who is far from perfect,
yet utterly fascinating. How did you develop your sense of who she was?
Susan: When I wrote about Sarah Churchill for DUCHESS, I had almost too much first-person information in letters, journals, even an “authorized” autobiography. Sarah kept every letter she received and copies of the ones she wrote; Barbara either didn’t keep anything, or her descendents chose not to preserve what she’d left. (The one exception is the Earl of Chesterfield, who did keep -- and publish -- the letters that Barbara sent to him as a head-over-heels fifteen-year-old; in the way of most teenage love-letters, these manage to be at once achingly innocent and terrifyingly worldly.)
There’s very little written directly by her, though a great deal recounting her activities in a distinctly tabloid-esque vein. She’s mentioned repeatedly by legendary diarist Samuel Pepys (shown to the left), who, like many other men of the time, was almost obsessed with her beauty, desirability, and yes, even her underwear (there’s a famous passage about how he made a point of walking past her house on wash-day, when her laundress would hang her lavishly lace-trimmed smocks and petticoats out to dry on the branches of her mulberry bushes, and how this was enough to fuel his dreams of her for nights afterward.)
But two of the other major contemporary histories of the Restoration were written by men who regarded Barbara as a personal enemy. Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon (that pompous-looking fellow in the middle left) could rightly attribute his downfall at court to Barbara’s hatred, and he returned the favor in his eight-volume history of Charles’s reign by repeating every vile whisper about her he could find, and others that he likely invented. 
In the History of His Own Time, Bishop Gilbert Burnet (the bottom one, on the left) likewise was no fan, viewing Barbara as a vile adultress, a Papist enemy of the Anglican church, and a threat to Charles's protestant soul. Consequentally he paints a very dark portrait of Barbara where no whispered scandal is too evil to repeat, even accusing her of lewd behavior in church as a little girl. Where there’s smoke, there’s generally fire, true, but while these two gentlemen were hardly impartial chroniclers of Barbara’s life, their venomous gossip has so often been repeated that it’s often accepted as historical fact.
For my own fictionalized version of Barbara, I sifted through the gossip to try to find the woman who could inspire such strong feelings. To create her voice, I had to decide which anecdotes and circumstances felt “right”, and what didn’t, and go from there.
Loretta: Though we see the world through Barbara’s eyes, King Charles II is, rightfully, at the heart of the story. Some of the scenes involving him were quite poignant. I've always found him hard to pin down. What’s your sense of him as a man and as a king?
Susan: As a man, Charles has many qualities of any proper romantic hero: he was tall, dark, athletic, and handsome, had a great sense of humor, lots of power, and several nifty palaces. He was kind and considerate of others (not a customary trait in monarchs!), and was known for his exquisite good manners. He preferred women who were as witty as they were beautiful, loved dogs and horses, and in a time when few aristocratic fathers showed much interest in their offspring, he adored his motley family of illegitimate children, making a point of visiting them all at least once a day.
Of course, not everything was perfect. He had a horrible relationship with his mother, always a suspicious omen. He was easily bored. He was constantly short of funds, and always having to beg Parliament for money. He didn’t seem to be able to be sexually faithful to any woman, and he was so habitually promiscuous that he almost certainly was poxed.
As a ruler, he was an idealistic king, determined to learn from his father’s mistakes. He was accessible
But he was also chronically lazy in matters of state, and possibly ADD. After a conscientious, hard-working start to his reign, he settled into a pattern of unproductive complacency, letting others make most of his political decisions. He disliked conflict, and preferred to take the easiest course rather than the difficult choices of a successful leader. He relied too much on secret financial subsidies from his cousin Louis XIV, and was prone to listening more to his heart than his head. He was most likely a secret Catholic, not a wise choice for the leader of the Anglican Church. His reign is generally characterized as one of great charm, but enormous wasted potential.
Loretta: In Royal Harlot, the king and Barbara are larger than life yet completely human. Their relationship is the stuff of drama, and yet it has its endearingly domestic side. How did you develop this view of their relationship? What, apart from the obvious sexual attraction, do you think made this relationship last so long?
Susan: Only the most public encounters between Charles and Barbara are historically documented, and
nothing of their private, personal relationship. That’s when the researcher has to step aside and let the novelist take over. But it did seem to me that Charles and Barbara were definitely kindred spirits. Both were young when they lost their fathers violently (Barbara’s died of battle wounds during the Civil War, Charles’s more dramatically was beheaded.) Both grew to adulthood with a strong senses of loss and melancholy that never quite left them, and gave something of a desperate edge to all the gaiety and merriment of their later lives. Both were witty, handsome, and widely admired and desired, with all the baggage that so many blessings can bring. (To the right is yet another painting by Lely of Barbara as a goddess.)
Both, too, shared a similar attitude towards sex and passion, and both seemed to require constant variety. They recognized one anothers’ virtues and flaws, and in return accepted them.
They were also connected by their five children. They fussed and worried over them like any other parents, and long after Barbara had left the English court and moved to France, she and Charles exchanged lengthy letters about this daughter’s marriage prospects or that son’s troubles at school that are touching by being so ordinary. (To the left is one of their daughters, Charlotte Fitzroy, with an African boy who was one of her personal servants; it was the fashion among aristocrats for children to have other children as servants, especially exotic, foreign servants -- a symbol of the growing power of the English empire.)
Loretta: This book gives us a glimpse not only of the characters whose story we followed in DUCHESS but of at least one character who's to play a lead role in your next book. Please tell us about what's coming next and when.
Susan: My next historical novel will be The King’s Favorite, the story of Nell Gwyn. Though Nell’s “job
description” might be the same as Barbara’s (she followed Barbara as Charles II’s mistress), she’s the antithesis of the mighty Lady Castlemaine: a sprightly, diminutive redhead who rose from the streets and brothels of Covent Garden to prominence as a wildly popular actress in the Restoration theatre. Quick-witted and generous to all, she was blessed with the rare ability both to make Charles laugh, and to win his complete trust. If Barbara was the drama-queen at court, then Nell was the comedienne. Yet even after Nell became the king’s mistress and friends with others in the court, she never forgot her roots among the common people. (That's Nell to the right, jaunty in a blue fringed cloak.)
The King’s Favorite will be published next summer by New American Library. Check out the first chapter on my website: www.susanhollowayscott.com.