Word Wenches

Travels with Wyckerly

Pat here!

The Wicked Wyckerly, the first of my Rebellious Sons series, will officially be released next week, but I’m brushing up for a blog tour and thought I’d start nattering here, no matter what the release date.

Which means free books! I have to do something with those boxes of books that have arrived on my doorstep.  I’ll give one away today and at each blog I attend next week.  So if you don’t win today, take a look at the sidebar and drop in to say hi wherever you can, please! It’s always nice to have friends around when I’m visiting.

I have an excerpt for the new book at my website at www.patriciarice.com if you want to test the Wyckerly waters. It’s not the first chapter because I’m always afraid readers will have my bad memory and think they’ve already read the book if they pick it up and the first page seems familiar.

I wish I did clever first lines so I could post one here, but it takes a paragraph or two before John Fitzhugh Wyckerly’s personality really kicks in—but personality he has, in spades. And hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Fitz is a mathematical genius who gambles for a living. You’ll have to pick up the book to read the opening since I don't have room to include it here.

The thing about Fitz is that he acknowledges his faults and wishes he could have been a true gentleman who took the Grand Tour Anne talked about a few weeks ago.  He also wishes he had been able to attend university, but his father decided a wine cellar was more important. So with no money or family support or education, Fitz became a charming gambler, the extra male needed to complete a dinner table, an idler who conceived a child while still under the illusion that love would make him better. It didn’t.

So he’s one more in a line of Wicked Wyckerlys when his brother breaks his neck in a drunken stumble, and Fitz is suddenly earl of a bankrupt estate and must assume a burden of responsibility he’s had no training to handle. It’s no wonder he panics and chooses to go after the horse he’s won in a card game instead of hanging around, waiting for his family’s creditors to heave him in gaol. 

Although, in actuality, aristocrats were spared debtor’s prison. Their creditors just had bailiffs haul off the furnishings. Brummel had to flee to France to escape his debts because he was a commoner. The Marchioness of Worcester, on the other hand, watched bailiffs drag off everything she owned, except the gown she wore, when her husband ran up a hundred thousand pound debt he had no hope of paying. Gambling was an addiction that destroyed families high and low, but in aristocratic circles, gaming debts had to be paid immediately. It was a matter of honor. Which meant that all the tradesmen that supplied the household usually went unpaid.

So my gambling earl would be well aware of the stakes involved upon inheriting an estate so deeply in debt. If he didn’t pay the tradesmen, they were likely to starve unless they went to court to have everything on the estate taken away. How would you like to be handed that mess?

However, making his living at cards taught Fitz a great deal about human nature, and he knows how to take advantage of opportunity when it knocks. And naturally, our fearless heroine, Abigail Merriweather, encompasses all the excellent traits he could desire in a wife—except the extortionate wealth the estate requires. Given that she’s desperately attempting to reclaim her four half-siblings from a guardian who believes they should be raised by a man, she’s a money pit worse than his estate.

But Abby is the woman he wants, and for the first time in his life, Fitz is in a position to go after what he wants, no matter what he has to do to have her. He just has to convince his stubborn Abby that he’s not so wicked after all…

Why is it we’re so fascinated with Regency England when in reality, much of the ton spent their time fiddling while the Continent went up in flames? I’ll pick one commenter for a free book based solely on whim!

And for the e-book lovers out there, MAGIC MAN will be released as an e-book at www.bookviewcafe.com on Friday!

Invictus: Blood, Sweat, and Reconciliation

By Mary Jo

I’m hammering toward the end of Lost Lords #3, plus the copyedit of my YA paranormal historical Dark Mirror (March 2011) must be sent to NYC today, so I was going to do a blog rerun, pulling something I wrote in years gone by.

Then over the weekend I saw the movie Invictus.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the movie is based on real life, and the lead character is Nelson Mandela.  The opening scenes show him being released from his many years in prison and becoming elected the president of post-apartheid South Africa. 

South Africa has 11 official languages, including Afrikaans (related to Dutch), English. Zulu, Xhosa, and seven other Bantu languages.  Ethnically it’s about 80% black African, 9% European/white, 9 Colored (mixed race) and 2% Asian.  In other words, an enormously complex “rainbow nation.” 

Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela, who is one the great men of our time, along with Ghandi and Martin Luther King, faced staggering problems.  Apart from a desperate need for foreign investment and issues of education, jobs, and everything else imaginable, there was a very real chance of civil war. 

A long history of oppression and the terrible years of apartheid left many black South Africans profoundly angry.  White South Africans feared how their nation was changing, and that they might lose everything they owned, perhaps even their lives. 

It was Mandela who called for “truth and reconciliation.”  Truth, because wounded people need to be heard. Reconciliation, because nothing less would allow South Africa to survive as a nation.  And he modeled that behavior himself by emerging from prison after 27 years, and forgiving those who had imprisoned and persecuted him.

South Africa’s white minority was large and powerful, with skills and wealth the country needed desperately.  Nationalizing all white owned business would probably have destroyed the country, just as neighboring Zimbabwe had been destroyed. 

The Flag of a Rainbow Nation

So how to reconcile the volatile factions of South Africa?  Sports loom large in most cultures, since they’re ritualized forms of competition, are entertaining, and they enable people to feel like part of a tribe.  “The Baltimore Orioles may be having a disastrous season, but they’re still our O’s!” 

Mandela, who is smart as well as wise, realized that rooting for a successful national team could help bring people together.  The Springboks are South Africa’s national rugby union team, named for the gazelle that is a national emblem.  However, rugby was largely a white sport.  Blacks (including Mandela in his prison years), would usually root for anyone playing against the Springboks. 

 

The Rugby World Cup

South Africa was to be the host of the first Rugby Union World Cup in 1995, and as host nation, they were guaranteed a slot even though the team might not have qualified on its own.  International sports had boycotted South Africa during the apartheid years, so having the World Cup competition was a Very Big Deal. 

The movie focuses on Mandela and Francois Pienaar, the captain of the Springboks rugby team.  It follows the arc of the traditional sports movie, as scrappy underdogs struggle to outdo themselves.  But Invictus is so much more.  The movie is woven of threads of growth and hope and fear as people adapt to their new nation.  (Real Mandela and Pienaar above.)

A running thread is Mandela’s bodyguards, where the black guards are horrified to be joined by four white guards, while the whites looked  as if they expected the worst.  Their gradual coming together as a team of men who could work with and respect each other mirrors wider changes. 

I don’t have time to do a well-researched, well integrated blog, so instead I’m just going to toss out some factoids.

1) Invictus is based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy:  Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.   Clint Eastwood was the director, and the movie was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Movie, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor

1) One reason this movie captivated me was because in 2005, we visited South Africa.  We traveled with South African friends and learned what a stunningly beautiful country it is.  On the flight over on South African Airways (lovely airline, by the way), I asked a couple of different South African passengers how the country had managed to avoid a disastrous, bloody civil war.  I’ll never forget the answer one of them gave:  “The forgiveness of the oppressed.”  He credited the generosity of spirit of the black South Africans.

2) Mandela was played by Morgan Freeman.  Having played God in an earlier movie,  he was a perfect choice.  So perfect that when Nelson Mandela was asked who he wanted to play him if a movie was made of his book Long Walk to Freedom, he said “Morgan Freeman.”  The casting was inevitable, and in fact Freeman was an executive producer who was instrumental in bringing Playing the Enemy to the screen.

Rugby!

3) Rugby was born in 19th century England, and it's a VERY rough sport—think American football played without any of the protective gear.  Rugby players are known for being big, muscular guys with no necks. <g> 

4) The rugby captain was played by Matt Damon, who is nothing like as large as the real Francois Pienaar, who is something like 6’ 4” and 240 pounds.  When the two men met and Damon looked up about 6” to Pienaar, he quipped that he looked bigger on screen.  They became immediate friends.  <g>

Damon is a good actor, and he got himself extremely buffed up for the role.  He also nailed the South African accent, from what my untrained ear could tell.

5) I live in a part of the US where there is a lot of British history and tradition, including some rugby.  The Mayhem Consultant was going by a local rugby playing field when a game was in progress.  Almost as soon as he parked, an ambulance came to carry away a player with a nasty compound leg fracture.  Did I mention that Rugby is rough?  <G> 

5) The Springboks' opponents in the big game were New Zealand's All Blacks, generally rated as the best team in rugby.  (The name refers to their uniforms—they’re racially integrated.)  The All-Blacks famously do a pre-game Maori haka war chant to raise the testosterone level and intimidate the opposition.  As I found when we went to a cultural show in Rotorua, New Zealand, sticking the tongue out as part of the aggressive posturing is basically saying, “You look delicious! I want to eat you!”  <G>

7) Here is a fun interview with Damon and Freeman. 

For me, what makes Invictus so powerful are the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation, since these themes come up in my books over and over.  It takes tremendous strength and maturity to seek reconciliation rather than vengeance.  (Abraham Lincoln wanted it after the Civil War.)  The movie's title came from the famous poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley.  It inspired Nelson Mandela in his years of captivity, (picture of him at Robben Island prison above) and famously ends:

I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

Inspiring words indeed.  Is reconciliation a theme you enjoy reading about?  What are some of your favorite reconciliation stories, whether book or movie or real life?  What other themes appeal to you strongly?

Mary Jo, posting another picture she took in Cape Town

WW Welcomes Pam Rosenthal

 Cara/Andrea here,

Today I’m handing the pen over to my friend Pam Rosenthal, who had kindly consented to pull up a chair at the Wench desk and write a few words about  . . . well, writing, and some of the thought processes that go into creating a story. As many of you know, Pam is the award-winning author of The Edge of Impropriety, which won the 2009 RITA for Regency Romance. In addition, The Slightest Provocation was a RITA finalist in 2007 and was just released this month in a new mass market edition. A lifelong lover of literature (she claims that her mother was wheeled into the delivery room reading a romance novel!) Pam can list an impressive array of professional accomplishments in the field, including bookseller, critic, essayist and, of course, novelist of richly complex emotional stories with an erotic edge.

And now, without further ado, I shall nudge the inkwell over to Pam . . .

Thanks so much to the Wenches for hosting me on the occasion of the recent mass-market reissue of The Slightest Provocation with its new cover look and consequent chance for a second generation of readers.

It’s particularly an honor and a pleasure because I believe that romance is the genre of second chances at happiness and all good things. Which for The Slightest Provocation is true on a good many levels, beginning way back with the story’s difficult conception. Because as I began to write it, I was beginning to suspect there was something about its opening scenes that just wasn’t making it. And yet I didn’t want to toss out those the meeting of hero and heroine during a brief erotic fling at a Calais inn, before their separate arrivals in England where the spy story commences and flings them back together.

I’d enjoyed writing that initial coupling. And even now, in print, the mutual seduction over a late supper of very good country French food survives largely unchanged. As does a large part of the subsequent erotic scene, which I felt succeeded in many ways: I liked my hero Kit and my heroine Mary; I believed in how they spoke to each other as they climbed the staircase to her room, and how they teased and touched after they got there.
And yet something didn’t jell. I kept telling myself that a high level of fortuitous intimacy is perfectly possible between strangers, that our bodies can sometimes be the wisest part of us. And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t enjoyed writing their actual moves: putting it in Regency-speak, I’d enjoyed it quite excessively. But something in the emotional interaction of the characters kept me from entirely believing it.

I was stuck, and so I held that part in abeyance and turned back to the political setting – a dark one, because this book takes place during the difficult years after Waterloo, when the British Home Office secretly sent provocateurs among its people, to fan the flames of local rebellion in order to scapegoat rebels, suppress dissension, and encourage Parliament to once again suspend habeus corpus. A nation at odds with itself, like a marriage on the verge of…That’s it, I thought.

“My hero and heroine are married,” I announced excitedly to my husband, who’d been sharing the political research as well as consoling me in my doldrums.

“Married and separated,” I continued, “and I was the last to know. But that’s why they’re not only physically compatible but so completely onto each other’s flaws, weaknesses, and moments of delusion and dishonesty.”

My imagination was picking up steam.

“They eloped,” I added, “when they were too young and dumb to understand the difficulties facing them. Nine years have passed since their legal separation. Kit’s gone to war and fought heroically under Wellington while Mary’s pursued a life among romantic poets and radical freethinkers. They’ve become different people, some ways, but they’ve never let go of their passionate attraction — or faced their differences or worked though the pain they caused each other.”

To which Michael, my highly literate husband, nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re writing a remarriage comedy,” he said.

“I am?” I asked. “What’s that?”

Whereupon, as a lifelong bookseller by trade, Michael did what he does best: by way of an answer, he handed me the very book I needed at that moment. Which was not E.P. Thompson’s enormously dense The Making of the English Working Class, with its wealth of information about machine-breaking in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, petitions to extend suffrage, marches of the dispossessed. We’d spent enough time poring over that one already. This book was a set of essays, The Pursuit of Happiness, by the philosopher and film scholar Stanley Cavell, about those witty, wonderful black and white films of the thirties and forties like The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib, His Girl Friday I— films about estranged couples and their reconciliations, replete with rough, comic strife, delicious banter and (when it’s Cary Grant as the male lead) some of the most elegantly executed pratfalls ever filmed.

Created during the supposedly quiescent decades between the suffrage movement and second wave feminism, according to Cavell these movies are the most eloquent cultural statement we have from that period, of men and women working toward erotic equality. I don’t know if I entirely buy his analysis. But I love the movies, and many of his points are brilliant – and clearly apposite to what I had in mind. As when Michael opened the book to read aloud from an early chapter about the couples (like Dex and Tracy in The Philadelphia Story) “having shared childhood together… discovered their sexuality together…”

“How did Stanley Cavell know,” I asked, “about my characters Mary and Kit?”

I read the book through, happily concluded that I was indeed writing a remarriage comedy, and grinned as the planning, the research, and the writing itself began to go more smoothly. My characters’ struggle to redeem their marriage and reconcile their differences fell into line with the spy plot, which I’d taken from the true story of the Pentrich Rebellion, an abortive uprising instigated in 1817 by a Home Office agent known as Oliver the Spy. I even planned a pratfall for my hero.

And what fun to write a romance about a squabbling husband and wife while squabbling with my own husband over it.

We researched and squabbled our way over to England, having our best vacation ever in the gorgeous Peak district of Derbyshire, near the part of Nottinghamshire where the Pentrich incident took place. We hiked the forests and meadows where I’d imagined Mary and Kit meeting as children and tramped over paths where the Pentrich rebels would have gone.

And on the way to Pentrich we got lost.

I sulked. Why couldn’t Michael have asked directions, I thought, when he’d had the chance? Why can’t men ever… but at that moment I cheered up, because I suddenly knew how my reunited couple had managed to run into the gang of would-be rebels on the night before the incident. They’d gotten lost, I thought, just as we had, because when Kit had had his chance to ask directions, of course he hadn’t done so either.

Back on track and now back in London (and well-fed on the best Lebanese and Indian food we’d ever had) we picked up the Pentrich paper trail at the National Archives at Kew. And it was only after we got the boxes of microfiche we needed and learned how to thread the spools into our neighboring microfiche readers that we confessed to each other that we were terrified we wouldn’t be able to decipher the handwriting in the letters between the Home Office agents and their spies and provocateurs.

Never fear, we managed it. (Though if you go on such a document quest, I suggest you give yourself two days. We had only one day with the documents, and I’m sure we would have done better if we’d returned the next day with eyes a little bit accustomed to the vagaries of period handwriting.) Still, the words – and the facts of the case – leaped out at us. Michael even found a letter with a marginal note from Home Office Secretary Lord Sidmouth, telling a local official (who wanted to arrest Oliver as a rabble-rouser) to leave him alone.

The man works for me, Sidmouth said, and signed his name.

A smoking gun, Michael whispered, and the distance between us and the events of two centuries before began to dissolve.

As I hope, in some very small way, that the centuries will dissolve for what new readers The Slightest Provocation (with its sexy new cover) will find in its new life in mass market.

And how about you? Do you share the books you love to read (or, if you’re a writer, do you share your process) with your near and dear? If you do, what’s that like? Is the collaboration smooth or bumpy?

And if you don’t, is there a way that you enjoy the very privacy of the pleasure?

Pam will be giving away a copy of her new mass market re-release of The Slightest Provocation to one lucky person, whose name shall be chosen at random from  those who leave a comment here between now and Monday morning.

Strange Eats and Other Treats

Recently the Wenches were discussing strange foods we've tried, and more familiar foods that some of us love -- and some of us avoid like the very plague. There are strange foods such as sheep's heads, familiar foods like liver and onions and other nasty things that our parents may have foisted upon us in childhood (I'm not a fan of liver 'n onions!). Preparing food can be an art, eating an adventure -- though eating adventurously can provide authentic historical research now and then!

So here's a smorgasbord of some of the things we brave (or not so) Wenches have tried, enjoyed, endured, run from, or found absolutely squicky, as Mary Jo likes to say. 

Mary Jo Putney...

I've traveled to five continents, but I'm pretty much of a food wimp. The weirder foods all seem to be animal in origin, and they bring out my vegetarian tendencies. I won't eat cute little guinea pigs baked in clay, Peruvian style. Or anything with a face that looks back at me, though I'm enough of a hypocrite to enjoy a fish fillet. 
 
No ants dipped in chocolate, or offal, no matter how many interesting nutrients they might contain.  I avoid sushi since I have no interest in raw fish.  Or Cornish hens, who lie there with there little legs helplessly stuck in the air.  I'd never be able to manage the European custom of serving little songbirds! 
 
Here in Maryland, where the natives think it's good fun to spend an evening smashing steamed hard crabs with a hammer and picking out the edible bits, I confine myself to neutral crab cakes.  And let's not talk about soft crabs with their legs dangling from a bun!  I'll leave the real eating adventures to the more carnivorous among us. <g>  I might have starved in earlier days when a cook would use every part of a pig but the squeal.  Or much more likely, I would be a LOT less wimpy!  Our modern abundance of food gives us lots more choices, and the freedom to be picky."
  

Joanna Bourne…

I lived in France for a good many years.  Now, the French are widely famous for their, shall we say, laissez-faire attitude towards edibility. They have no silly prejudices about claws, shells or
exoskeletons and proceed to, as my husband puts it, 'eat their way through the food chain'.

Normandy, France. 
Imagine a pretty, middle-class restaurant overlooking the harbor. Open windows with curtains billowing in the warm breeze.  Into the scene steps the lithe, dark-eyed French waiter who looks like he's been sent along by Central Casting to play 'minor member of the Maquis who does something heroic.' He ceremoniously presents the specialty of the house. Fruits de mer.
Literally, 'fruits of the sea'. You know those critters that crawl about in tide pools and cling to the craggy, sea-splashed rocks of the intertidal zone? The ones you studied in Oceanography 101?
That's them. The fruits.

You must understand, I am more adventurous in spirit than in action. This is useful for a writer but inconvenient when confronted, in Real Life, with the results of ordering adventurously from the menu.

I had children to set an example for and the honor of America to uphold so I did not say, "Will you take all those beady little eyes and armoured carapaces back to the video game where they are playing Invading Horde of Evil Minions and bring me a nice fish?"

Instead I smiled and picked up a pointy metal stick just as if I knew what I was doing and said gaily, "Dig in, my chicks," and attacked my first periwinkle.

It is one of the sad truths of this sublunary world that unknown foods fall into three categories; (a) tastes like chicken, (b) tastes like rubber bands, or (c) where is my napkin so I can inconspicuously spit

this out? Periwinkles fall into the rubber band food group. Fortunately, this was France and they followed one of the basic lawsof classical French Cooking, i.e. -- 'Put it in garlic butter.'

I rather liked periwinkles when I stopped thinking about it.

Jo Beverley...

I care about taste and texture, but I'm not so squeamish as some other Wenches. It might be because the reality of meat was all around me when I grew up. Some butchers still had game, such as rabbit, hare, pheasant hanging outside, head, fur, feathers, feet etc. Chickens were sold with head and feet, and we children got the feet to play with. Pull the tendons and the feet contracted. The giblets were all inside, and I was fascinated by the tiny heart and liver, and the emptied stomach. Herring and mackerel needed to be gutted at home etc.

This would be the experience of most characters in our books and more so. They would have witnessed slaughter and in many cases killed some food animals themselves. If they did any cooking, they'd be dealing with dead bodies. Or even live ones at times.

Odd foods in the past. They used everything! I have recipes for stuffed cockscombs (and not the callow young men,) baked ox palate, giblet pie, and broiled cod sounds. Anyone know what bit this is? I couldn't find a definition, but the instruction "Preparatory to boiling cod's sounds, it is quite necessary that they should be soaked in milk and water for at least six hours" is ominous!

Nicola Cornick...
 
My biggest eating challenges have occurred in Scandinavia. I really don’t like eating anything that still has bones in, let alone with wings, claws, beaks and feathers still attached. On one memorable occasion we were in a restaurant in Iceland and the speciality of the day was gannet. I knew that in remote societies like St Kilda the gannet was the staple food for centuries and people would risk life and limb climbing down the cliffs to catch the birds and take the eggs from the nest, also risking a face full of half-digested gannet bile in the process. Apparently the St Kilda population developed prehensile toes over the centuries as a result of this way of life. Gannet, however, was not for me, nor was the puffin that was also on the menu that day. On another occasion, in Norway, I was offered reindeer steak with loganberry sauce but again I couldn’t accept, this time because I had sentimental visions of Christmas running through my mind. I could not eat Santa’s furry helpers!


Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens...

I'm pretty adventurous with my body-I've climbed to 13,500 ft mountain peak, I've golfed in gale-force winds in Ireland, I've  mountain-biked down steep forest trails in the Alps. But when it comes to what I'll dare put in my mouth . . . well, call me a wimp.

I remember when I was little, my parents and their friend for some reason decided to have a party with really weird  and wacky food-you know, pickled grasshoppers, rattlesnake, chocolate-covered ants. I look one look and . . . ran for cover. Anything with identifiable body parts intact (chicken and turkey wings I can stomach) is not overly appealing. I'm semi-vegetarian (chocolate is a vegetable, right?)  so I dig right into risottos and quesadillas. But when it comes to more esoteric fare, like creatures with eyes, tails, spindly appendages, etc-my fork becomes a defensive weapon.

Which is too bad, because I've traveled to a lot of places where the cuisine has a lot of local color. In Scotland, haggis-a mixture of sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal and suet, all cooked in a sheep's stomach-is a traditional staple of post-round golf dinners, served up with single malt scotch. I took a mulligan. French country cooking is delicious, but pig's feet and frog legs can take a hike, as far as I'm concerned. And on my recent trip to Marrakech, a popular snack was roasted sheep's head, displayed in a neat row. Brains were arranged in a neat little pile on the side for those who preferred a smaller nosh.  I decided on dried apricots and dates from the neighboring stall.

So what's the most exotic thing I've tried? I did venture to order wild boar in Switzerland. However it was a filet, and steak looks like, well, steak.

Patricia Rice...

I'm so very not a foodie that I'm not totally aware of what foods are historically accurate unless I look them up. But I do remember with great fondness my Irish grandmother's soda bread. I want fruit for breakfast and pasta or chicken with veggies for supper and anything cooked to death in heavy sauce is off the menu. But I do admire the historical ability to eat vast quantities of animal fat and not become obese and keel over into the eels!

Anne Gracie

Food fashions have changed dramatically in the past 50 years. My mother regularly ate sheep's brains. Loved them. Poached, fried, or on toast, usually. None of the rest of us would touch them. You used to see brains in the butchers, but not any more. Her generation regularly ate cuts like liver, brains, tongue, tripe, kidneys, sweetbreads, etc.  I can't bear the thought of eel, either, but my dad used to love it. He caught eels as a boy and ate them with relish. People in the past, rich or poor, ate a lot more of the animal than we do now — and a lot more animals.

I have a 1790 English cookbook that has recipes for pickling sparrows and fricasseeing larks and potting swans, of a sauce to go with boiled cock's combs, and a dish of lark's tongues (how tiny must they be?) Cod's heads were roasted and served with gravy, pigs ears and pigs cheeks made into a "ragoo" (ragoût) and calves foot made into puddings.

I think we're more squeamish these days about the cuts of meat, too. We grow up distant from the reality of the animal and only see nicely wrapped slices. And the names of cuts that are graphic, or the cuts that look very lifelike (eg tongue), have gone out of fashion. But I think all sorts of offal is coming back into fashion; certainly I've seen expensive restaurants serving it in various fancy dishes.

As for terrible meals, the worst meal I ever ate was fed to me by a very poor old woman we'd stayed with (someone's relative.) All our meals with her up to that point had consisted of bread and cheese, or soup, or beans. For our departing breakfast she made us what she obviously thought would be a real treat — cubes of pork fat fried in olive oil! I remember choking it down with polite murmurs of appreciation and afterward we sat in a bus that hurtled and bounced down a never-ending twisty mountain road. We grimly held onto our meal. LOL.

Susan Fraser King...

Like Joanna Bourne, I had a similar experience in France when I encountered a big fish on my plate in a Parisian restaurant. Whole. Tail, fins, eyes. The thing was practically bigger than its platter. I'm squeamish about flesh foods to start with and couldn't even begin to dig in and fillet that thing. It was crusted in herbs and covered in butter, but it was ... looking at me. Or not, since it was cooked. The very nice waiter took it back, got it all sliced up and transformed into nicely anonymous protein, and I ate a little of it. But, having seen the poor victim of my meal in the flesh, so to speak -- I didn't eat fish for a long time after that!

Being a writer of many Scottish-set novels, I've tried lots of Scottish foods, including haggis. Most people who haven't tried it think it has to be pretty nasty, though it's actually not bad at all. I did try it years ago, but now that I don't eat meat, I've lost my haggis eligibility. My husband loves haggis, which is hard to come by in these parts except at Burns Suppers held by our Scottish friends, so any haggis that's on my plate on those January evenings I gladly pass over to him.

And if you've a taste for pastries, there's little to top a high Scottish tea for the comfort factor of sweets and carbs, with the accompanying pastries, scones and goodies (and a true high Scottish tea includes sausages and heartier fare as well as pots and pots of steaming hot tea!). As for historical Scottish foods, I'll stick with porridge and oatcakes, salmon and soups, and not even think about that peculiarly Highland delicacy: raw oats mixed with fresh blood tapped from the nearest cow.

Now that we've possibly spoiled your breakfast, lunch or dinner with our food ramblings, let us know some of your favorite strange foods -- what have you tried, what do you love, and what would you never, ever touch? 

Susan

Patricia Rice's Wicked Wyckerly

Anne here, interviewing our very own Wench, Patricia Rice about her writing life and newest book, THE WICKED WYCKERLY. 

Most regular readers of this blog know Pat, but did you know that:
  — she's a  New York Times and USA Today bestseller

— she's written forty-seven books

— she's won numerous awards, dozens of RT Critics' Choice Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award and I don't know how many RITA nominations. 

— and she’s not killed any editors in the process. That she knows of.

Anne :  Pat, you've asked this of others, but I don't think I've ever heard you answer it yourself. How did you start writing?  Were you making up stories in kindergarten, or did you come to the trade later? Were there any particular writers who inspired you?
(Pause for Pat to to recover from the cheek of being fed her own question so early in the piece)

Pat: LOL! Turn about is fair play. Besides, it’s a fun question. I think I was probably editing stories in kindergarten—I remember marking up my picture books with red crayon. (yeah, yeah, everyone’s a critic)  I didn’t start seriously putting my own stories down on paper until about fourth grade, when I could get my hands on spiral notebooks. The next year, my father brought home a used IBM Selectric, and I was off and running—although teen tragedy and Nancy Drew mysteries were my genre then.

 Anne : So, pretty much started in the cradle, then. Your latest project is a new regency series entitled Rebellious Sons. The first book, THE WICKED WYCKERLY, comes out on July 6th.  Pat, I'm so intrigued by the idea of featuring rebellious sons. What was the inspiration for this series?

Pat: Rebellion? I was tired of rich, aristocratic heroes who already have everything money can buy. I wanted guys who had to struggle for their dreams. Admittedly, it’s just a fun way to torture them, but making them work hard for their happiness intrigued me and offered opportunity for lots of heroic conflict.

Anne: I was lucky enough to read THE WICKED WYCKERLY in manuscript form, and I have to say I loved it. I smiled all the way through, chuckling from time to time, and I put it down at the end with a big happy sigh. I was hooked from the beginning, where the hero, Fitz, is in such a pickle. To quote you, "Poor chap, his irresponsible bachelor’s life has just come to a crashing, nearly fatal, end with the inheritance of a bankrupt earldom and the arrival of a six-year-old dispenser of flaming dragon dung."  Fitz is not your average romance hero, is he?
 (Pause for Pat to respond, waxing lyrical about the gorgeousness and brilliance of Fitz ... or to fling the feeble question back in Anne's teeth.)

Pat: I think I like Anne’s response better than my own. <G> Fitz is brilliant, actually, a math genius with no education other than memorizing a book of insects he stole as a rebellious child. And the whole point of this series is to create a non-average hero! But he’s a hero, nonetheless. I mean, even in the very first pages, the poor guy has taken on the overwhelming task of tending a six-year-old with a vocabulary of curses better than his. I ask you, what kind of man would do that? And learn to do it quite well. My kind of hero!

Anne :  And he’s kind, though he tried to hide it, and he’s  a gambler, quite a good one. The heroine, Abigail Merriweather, is a great foil for both Fitz and his wild child.
 (Pause for Pat to respond to what is not even a question...)

 Pat:  I think I’m going to hand this interview back to you just to see where you can go with it…  Okay, I’ll play: Abby is blunt, honest, shy, and just about everything Fitz is not. Which means she also knows how to handle six-year-old termagants and is immune to Fitz’s practiced charm. She provides the grounding they need to stop flailing about and consider their not inconsiderable personal assets. How could Fitz not fall in love with a miracle worker, even if she chases him with a hoe and refuses his offer of marriage?

Anne :  Yes, it’s delicious fun watching them throw sparks off each other. If THE WICKED WYCKERLY was made into a movie, who would you have play Fitz, and who Abigail?
 (Pause for Pat to delete stinking rotten hard-to-answer question)

  Pat: Delete. <G> I believe I told Sue Grimshaw that a short Katherine Hepburn might have the right attitude for Abby, but I can’t even remember what name I gave her for Fitz.  The part of my brain reserved for names is infinitesimal. Check her Borders True Romance blog  on July 7 to see if it’s there. (How was that for a neat promotional turn about?)

Anne : Sneaky, but smart (heh heh.) I really enjoyed the cast of quirky minor characters in the story, from the creaky, shopworn but immensely dignified butler who nothing could shock, to the illiterate blackmailer. Who was your favorite? 
(finally a question!)

 Pat:  The butler, hands down. That old man had put up with a succession of incompetent, illiterate earls, running the household with creative license for decades. Despite the opportunity to rob the place blind, he kept on working—maybe helping himself a little a long the way, but only what he’d earned!

Anne: The very first Patricia Rice book I read was Denim and Lace -- a western romance and a fabulous book. Do you think you'll ever go back to writing westerns? I confess I miss them. 

 Pat: I confess, a lot of us miss them. But the book market tends to follow television trends, in my experience. Right now, we’re still suffering from vampiritis (is that an infection of vampires?). I’m not sure we’ll ever get back to the innocent times of sexy saloon ladies and handsome gamblers, unless they’re in outer space.  Hmmm….(idea balloon floating)  

Anne: Steampunk westerns anyone? Pat, you’re a prolific writer who's written in a range of subgenres and weathered all kinds of changes in publishing.  Any advice for new writers?

Pat: Just the one I always use—perseverance is the only way to publication. You can’t sell what isn’t written. If I’d quit every time my book was turned down…oh wait, I would still be a CPA and would only have seen that first rejection. Instead, I can now paper one wall with rejection letters and an entire room with book covers. And work in my jammies, if I’m so inclined.

Anne:  And many more books to come, I hope. Can you tell us a little about the next book in the Rebellious Sons series?

Pat: THE DEVILISH MONTAGUE will be about Blake, whose superstitious family believes he’s cursed to die before he’s thirty and who seems to be doing his best to prove it.

Anne: Sounds lovely. All the best of luck with the launch of THE WICKED WYCKERLY. Anyone who can't wait to read it, there's a gorgeous teaser here.  

Pat:  Anne, thanks for prodding me into talking about Fitz and Abby! I just received my author copies of THE WICKED WYCKERLY, so I’ll give one away to whichever comment entertains us most. While we’re amusing ourselves, could we talk about what makes a man heroic? Does it have to be his ability to take care of his family with wealth?
Anne again: And I'll add, is there anyone else out there who misses western romances?

Guest Pam Rosenthal

Cara Elliott will be hosting award winning author Pam Rosenthal on Friday, June 25.  Pam comes by her romance writing honestly--before she was born, her mother was wheeled into the delivery room while reading Forever Amber.

Pam's The Slightest Provocation was a RITA finalist in 2007, and The Edge of Impropriety won the RITA in 2009. Please join us Friday and hear what Pam has to say about the writing life.

P.S.  Now scroll down for the next post about Honorary Word Wench, Eileen Dreyer.

(1) Eileen Dreyer-HWW (2) Winner

Eileen Dreyer - HWW:

Pat, here.  It gives me very great pleasure on behalf of the Word Wenches to appoint Eileen Dreyer as an Honorary Word Wench and thank her for her interview! Eileen, you are now able to write HWW after your autograph, and in gratitude, we offer a virtual gift of an Irish Pub in which you may sing to your heart's content... 

Book Winner:

Jenny Reed is our newest winner.  She won an anthology from Nicola for leaving a comment on Nicola's post entitled Do You Enjoy a Short Story?  Congratulations, Jenny!

Hearts of Oak

Hello, Nicola here with greetings on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, 18th June 1815. I'm deep in deadline territory (the manuscript is due in today!) and I'm sitting here on a beautiful sunny day when I would far rather be outside enjoying the countryside. So I thought I would compromise - if I can't go out I can bring the countryside in. So I am blogging about an article I wrote a few years ago for my Public History course. It's a bit unusual but I hope it interests you. It's about the place of the oak tree in the history of Britain.

The Celts, the Norse and the Germanic races held the oak as sacred from pre-Christian times. In Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic cultures it was associated with the storm gods Esus, Zeus, Jupiter, Donar and Thor because its size and low electrical resistance makes it more prone to be struck by lightning than other woodland trees. It was also believed to be a tree of prophecy and a channel for communication with the Gods. In Homer’s Iliad, Odysseus travels to Dodona to consult the oak tree oracle as to the plans of Zeus.

 

It was the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus who used the term robur (from the Latin for strength) to describe the common oak. In doing so he was referring to a dual quality of the oak - its robustness as a living tree and the strength of its timber.  It is hardy enough to withstand attacks by pests and diseases, and extremes of heat and cold.  For thousands of years it has been used for construction purposes where durability was required. Its use for coffins also had a dual purpose. The strength of the wood in the physical sense made it a sound choice for burials but it was also chosen for the sense of safe passage that it conveyed in protecting the dead on their journey to the next world.

 

From the pagan image of the Green Man garlanded by oak leaves found in many parish churches to the writing of Shakespeare and Keats, the oak has rooted itself deep in the British national consciousness and its influence is represented in many ways.

 

The Royal Oak is the second most popular pub name in Britain, after the Red Lion. Pub names are key words and phrases that unlock doors to social and military history, folklore, national heroes and heroines, natural history, dialects, trades, industries and professions, sports and the sometimes odd British sense of humour.

 

The original Royal Oak was the Boscobel Oak near Shifnal in Shropshire where King Charles II and Colonel Carless hid from noon to dusk after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.  After the Restoration, the 29^th May, the King's birthday was declared Royal Oak Day. Ironically, it was the popular cult of the Boscobel Oak that killed the tree itself; it was dead by the end of the nineteenth century because patriotic souvenir-hunters tore off its branches, thereby hastening its demise. The name, the cult and the link to the pub all live on in the Royal Oak ale now made by the Eldridge Pope brewery. It is described as: “A beautifully soft, well-balanced, bitter, strong, full-flavoured pint."

 

The association of oak trees with national heroes can be no coincidence. Where else could Robin Hood have met his Merry Men than under the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest? The story could not have been the same, either visually or symbolically if the tree had been a silver birch. The joint symbolism of the hero and the talismanic tree is a powerful one. Here the qualities of both man and tree are entwined, representing once again strength, protection, durability, courage and truth.

 

The connection of hero and oak tree can also be traced through King Arthur, whose Round Table was said to be hewn from a massive piece of oak and whose coffin at Glastonbury Abbey – if indeed the coffin was Arthur’s – was made from a hollowed out oak tree. Other oak trees that have been associated with British heroes include the Elderslie Oak, which was said to have sheltered William Wallace and 300 of his men (that must have been a BIG tree!) and Owen Glendower’s Oak from which tree he witnessed the battle between King Henry IV and Henry Percy, Macbeth’s Oak at Birnam and Sir Philip Sydney’s oak tree at Penshurst. In all cases the trees are associated with or commemorate a war hero. They shed some of their strength and gravitas on the character, whose exploits mirror the timeless power of the tree.

 

It is significant that in most cases the oak tree in English folklore has been a symbol of loyalty rather than of revolution, whereas during the French Revolution the tree of liberty was often represented as the oak. Kett’s Oak, in Norfolk, however is a symbol of rebellion. In July 1549 Robert Kett led an uprising against the Crown to demand the end to the practice of enclosure of common land. He made a rousing speech beneath the oak tree on the village green in Wymondham and led a mob in the march on Norwich, where he captured the castle. Defeated by the Earl of Warwick, Kett was condemned for treason and hanged.  His oak tree lived on, however, and became a symbol of freedom from oppression. Under the name of the Reformation Oak it became a place of regular pilgrimage for political radicals.

 

In 1763 Roger Fisher, published Heart of Oak, The British Bulwark, in which he argued empires rose or fell depending on their abundance or dearth of the oak. Fisher warned that the gentry were squandering the future by leaving woodlands to be destroyed by animals protected for the hunt, frittering away the birthright of future Britons so they might fund their passions for "horses and dogs, wine and women, cards and folly". "We are preying on our vitals," Fisher warned, "yet the bulk of the nation is insensible to it." It was left to the newly formed Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts to change attitudes. The Society offered prizes to those who planted the most trees - supremely the oak - but also the softwood conifers used for masts. As a result, acorn fever took hold. The great Dukes planted acre after acre of oak trees. Naval officers on leave, like Collingwood, went around surreptitiously scattering acorns from holes in his breeches in the parks of his unsuspecting hosts!

 

The title "Heart of Oak" had already been used for a poem by David Garrick, written in 1759:

 

“Hearts of Oak are of ships, hearts of oak are our men,

We always are ready, Steady boys, steady!

We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.”

 

This used the image of the oak tree to represent the strength of Britain’s fighting men. Garrick was writing at a time of military success in the Seven Years War, when victories in the West Indies, Canada, India and off the coast of France had thwarted Louis XV’s plans to invade Britain. Botanically speaking, the heart or hearts of oak is the central part of the tree, which has no sap and was prized in shipbuilding. During Nelson’s time 2000 oaks would have been used to build a 74 gun warship.These ships were the "wooden walls" that protected Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. In Garrick’s poem the “hearts of oak” were both the British ships of the line and the men who sailed them. These were the stalwart defence, the protection against the ever-present threat of foreign invasion that had been a motif of British life for centuries.

 

These days the British Houses of Parliament are panelled in oak, hard, plain, solid and austere. The power of the symbolism of the oak not only in history but also in the present day was demonstrated with the discovery of the Bronze Age timber circle at Holme in Norfolk in 1998. For some it was a spiritual site, a symbol of the beliefs and ideas of long dead ancestors. For others it was purely historical, a glimpse into a distant era that we can only read about in history books. For everyone it held its own magic as a direct and tangible link with the past.

 

The language of trees is in use every day. We are rooted in history, we branch out, we grow or re-grow, and we trace our family tree.  Genealogy is frequently represented by the image of the tree with its visible roots going down into the earth.  Even today the focus of many English villages is an ancient oak on a village green. In its shade people sit and talk. Notices pinned to its bark tell of fetes and fairs, marriages and funerals, items lost and found and other announcements of local importance. The oak has been and continues to be part of the fabric of life.  Do you have a favorite tree, or a tree that features in folklore or stories, or one that has played a significant part in local events?

Walking Sticks and Canes

Howdy.  Brand new Wench Joanna here.  I'm just right this minute finding a desk in a quiet corner of the library, laying out my quills, all freshly trimmed, and unstoppering the inkwell.  This is my first posting.

I'm the author of three books set in England and France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; The Spymaster's Lady, My Lord and Spymaster, and my latest that is so recent on the shelves it's still settling down, tucking its edges in, The Forbidden Rose.

I'm here to talk of walking sticks and canes carried by the haut ton of England and France.

English gentlemen, long before Teddy Roosevelt showed up to advise this, walked softly and carried a big stick.  Every other portrait shows some nattily dressed fellow  with a walking stick pegged jauntily into the ground or a slim baton negligently tucked under the elbow.  The dress cane was the quintessential mark of the dandy for three centuries, part fashion accessory, part aid to communication, part weapon.

And I suppose you could always just lean on it.

      

The word 'cane' meant a hollow reed or a tube or pipe.  It came to be applied especially to a length of bamboo.  The long smooth section between the nodes of a bamboo plant made a light, strong, and close grained wood, particularly suited to walking sticks.  The best of this bamboo was shipped out of the port of Malacca in Malaysia.  Thus gentlemen flourished their 'malacca' walking sticks and the word 'cane' came to mean any sort of smaller stick or baton, of whatever material. 

Well, what did you do with a cane anyway?  Why did you carry one?  

I see the cane primarily as a form of self-expression.  Just as the fashionable lady wielded her fan in a hundred nuanced gestures, the gentlemen did the same with a thin ebony cane.  The wide sweep of emphasis, the tip ground to the carpet in silent disagreement, a bobble of ironic comment, the nob tapped to the lips in farewell.  So expressive.  

Everybody had his own style.  As a writer in 1799 puts it,

"One man walks with a stick close under his arm; another carries it horizontally, poising it by the middle; a third holds it up as a soldier on duty holds up his sword; a fourth bears it on his shoulder, as though it were a log of timber; a fifth twirls it round and round by the hook; a sixth walks with it so that it is up in the air and down on the ground alternately."

 
 

The canes themselves, not surprisingly when you consider the wealth of those carrying them, were objects of luxury and display. 

The sh aft might be the aforementioned malacca, rosewood or ebony or the less exotic ash, blackthorn or hazel.  Might be ivory or whalebone or, in one notable historical instance, a narwhale tusk.  The nob at the top was sometimes beautifully plain, as suited the spare, elegant style of a Regency gentleman.  Sometimes it was an object d'art in carved ivory, or figured gold or silver, porcelain or enamel work.  The tip that touched the ground, the ferrule, was often brass and decorated very simply.

 

Here's an ornate gold walking stick nob from 1740.  As early as the last half of the Eighteenth Century and all through the long Nineteenth, a gold-topped cane was the mark of the physician.   Doubtless the sick  were much reassured by this symbol of affluence.

 

Ladies carried too.  They might have a dozen slender canes to suit every outfit and mood.  These were particularly pretty, fanciful objects. 

In this portrait above, see the fluffy yellow puff near the top?  That's a wrist cord that passes through a hole in the shaft, just below the head.  This allows the cane to be twirled delicately or hung from the wrist.  These cane ribbons or cane strings often had tassels on them. Decorative and useful.

(And that chick in yellow? You can see she's just biding her time till she gets to be a crabby old woman so she can whack people with her cane.)

The secret life of canes.

Toulouse Lautrec, pictured here with his cane, of course, is said to have carried a concealed flask within it, so he would never be without his beloved absinthe.  They called these 'tippling canes'.  They'd have a little bottle and maybe even a tiny glass for drinking. 

Other canes held a spyglass that could be unscrewed and extracted for your viewing pleasure.  Hidden compartments within the shaft might contain a couple pair of dice.  Why do I suspect such dice would not be entirely honest? 

The head of the cane might have a compass embedded in the top --  which seems very useful -- or a telescoping extension to measure the height of horses. Some opened to reveal hidden carvings, amusing or risqué.  

Women's sticks, (though I'm going to assume at least some of the women were also carrying dice or their favorite tipple,) might carry fans, snuff bottles, or cosmetic holders. 

And you got yer musical instruments.  Walking-stick instruments were popular in the first half of the nineteenth century, with the whole cane acting as an oboe, recorder or flute. 

But . . . for all this gold and silver and precious wood, we are talking about sticks, basically.  And men.  Men carrying big sticks. 

Think weapon.  Think canes with attitude. 

I must call upon Sherlock Holmes, here.  Not so much the recent movie, but the actual canon of his work.  Holmes says to Watson,

". . .he was rude enough to set a dog at me.  Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through.  Relations were strained after that . . "

I have no doubt gentlemen carried canes, in part, as defense against the impertinence of man and beast.

Interesting sidelight on the history of the cane:  In France, after 1794, in the lull between the chopping off heads and setting out to conquer the rest of Europe, fashionable young Frenchmen -- Incroyables, they were called, because their clothing was 'unbelievable' -- took up carrying canes very different from the elegant, slim walking sticks that came before. 

They strolled about the town with heavy, gnarled  cudgels.  This was part fashion, part political statement, part what you might call . . . subtext.  The streets of Paris were enlivened as these Incroyables tracked down and beat the stuffing out of members of the more radical groups responsible for the Terror. 

You might say canes became part of the political dialog.

Sword canes?  Not just a myth.

 

 How well these 'sword canes' functioned as dueling weapons, with no proper grip or guard, is open to  debate.  But for an unexpected defense or a blitz attack, a sword cane or hidden dagger cane might have been just the bees knees.  This was carrying a concealed weapon, Eighteenth Century style.

But the practical cane fighting techniques that evolved over the 1700s and early 1800s didn't use swordplay.  The cane itself -- shaft and knob -- was the weapon.  Very primal.  This fighting style, called la canne, developed in France and incorporated elements of singlestick and savate.  By 1850, this sort of stick fighting had become a formal part of French military training.

Elegant fashion accessory turns, in an instant, to weapon.  I like the contrast.

In my book, My Lord and Spymaster, snappy dresser and part-time killer Adrian takes on a gang of toughs, armed with his ebony cane.  Now this is a particularly cool cane.  The head is a grinning silver skull and the upper end of the cane has been hollowed out and filled with solid lead.  It is one of the more persuasive arguments Adrian brings to a dispute.  

photocredits above,  V&A, the Met, and the Museum of London.  Telescope cane Mallett Antiques



If you were to carry a decorative walking stick, what kind would it be?  An elegant Eighteenth Century cane with an engraved ivory handle?  Folk carving?  Something with an ipod hidden inside?

18th century mourning

Hi, here's Jo, thinking black. Charlie as Count Dracula will have to do as illustration!

The hero of my MIP -- titled An Accidental Countess, and to be out next March -- is a very new earl, and his family is still in mourning. I had to go digging for details.Perhaps you, too, thought serious mourning was a Victorian invention, but it seems not. In fact one book said that they copied it from the Georgians!   I've been digging around and I've come up with an assortment of funereal details from the mid 18th century. I'm going to share them here, because I think they're fascinating.

It's a long blog and short on pictures, but I hope you enjoy it. I've put in some comments along the way. My comments are in blue, like this.

I start with the official court instructions upon the death of Edward Augustus, duke of York (25 March 1739 – 17 September 1767), the king's younger brother, taken ill en route to Italy. As you'll see, he was young, as was the king at this time. I can't say he looks it in this picture, however.

Lord Chamberlain's office. Orders for the Court's going into mourning  on Sunday neat, the 4th day of October, for bis late Royal Highness  next brother to his majesty, viz.

The  ladies to wear black silk, plain muslin or long lawn, crape or love hoods, black glazed gloves, black paper fans, and black silk shoes. Undress, black or dark grey unwatered tabbies. (Tabby means a plain weave.)

The men to wear black cloth, without buttons on the sleeves or pockets, plain muslin or long lawn cravats and *weepers, crape hat- bands, and black swords and buckles. Undress, dark grey frocks."

*Weepers were white bands worn instead of frills at the cuff, or as a white lining to the ciff. I'm not uite sure. The cravat bit is to stress that they be plain, without lace.

The instructions to people at large were: "That it is expected, that upon the present occasion of the death of  his late Royal Highness Edward Augustus, duke of York and Albany, all  persons do put themselves into decent mourning, the said mourning to  begin on Sunday next, the 4th day of October."

Poor Cate -- yes, my hero's called Cate, from Catesby. His brother's death catches him with nothing more sober to wear than shabby riding clothes.

To the military. Sept. 29, 1767. Scarborough, M. War-Office, Sept. 19. His majesty does  not require that the officers of the army should wear any other mourning, on the present melancholy occasion, than a black crape round  their left arms, with their uniforms. By his majesty's command.

On a different note, here's a satirical piece from the The Town and country magazine,1769 which besides probably being true of some situations, tells us what mourning behaviour should be.

General Rules for behaviour in Mourning

A Wife losing her husband.

Not to appear in publick the first week; nor in private without a  handkerchief. The second Sunday at church, much affected with the  sermon ; the handkerchief is not omitted.

May go to a tragedy after the first month ; and weep in character,  either at the play, or the loss of her husband.

The second month she  may assist at a comedy, smile, but not languishingly.

The third month she may laugh at a play, or dance at Cornelys's*, with her intended bridegroom. And the fourth month she may jump into his  arms, and finish her widowhood.

*Anyone remember Madam Cornelys, who played a part in A Lady's Secret? At this point, her events were the Almack's of the time. Her business failed, and Almack picked up the very good idea.

A Husband losing his wife.

Must weep, or seem to weep at the funeral. Should not appear at the chocolate house the first week.

Should vent a proper sigh whenever good wives, or even matrimony is mentioned. May take a mistress into  keeping the third, week, provided he had not one before. (I think this means that if he'd had one during the marriage there'd be no change.)

May appear with her in public at the end of the month ; and as he, probably, may not chuse to marry again. he may at the close of the second month, be  allowed a couple of mistresses to solace him in his melancholy.

An Heir losing his Father.

It would be more decent not to break out before the funeral. Horses, dogs, and equipage may, however, be getting ready; plans of villas,  dispositions of gardens, and the like, may be in the meanwhile  examined; the additional servants may be hired, and even put into mournin.

The ladies may visit him, (after the funeral) or he may visit them (before) provided some little precaution is used to prevent scandal.

He may frequent the gaming table, get admitted a member of the Jockey Club and the Franciscan Friar  as soon as he can;(Presumably the Hell Fire club, where the members wore monk's robes. At this time it doesn't seem to have been a place of occult wickedness, but a slightly kinky club popular with major figures in society and politics.)

and if he  is not ruined by the expiration of his mourning, he may only change his  dress, and pursue the same plan as long as his fortune will last.

Complaints of extravagant funerals.

If people really were beggaring themselves to pay for grand funerals, they had a point.

"I have frequently known a greater sum expended at the funeral of a tradesman, than would have kept his whole family for a twelvemonth, and it has more than once happened, that the next heir has been flung into gaol for not being able to pay the undertaker's bill."

The writer cites this example, and again we see what a funeral might have looked like.

"I was passing the other night through a narrow little lane in the skirts of the city, I was stopped by a grand procession of a hearse  and three mourning-coaches drawn by six horses, accompanied with agreat number of flambeaus and attendants. I naturally concluded that all this parade was to pay the last honours to some eminent  person, whose consequence in life required that his ashes should receive all the respect which his friends and relations could pay to  them.

I could not help smiling, when upon enquiry I was told  that the corpse (on whom all this expence had been lavished was no other than Tom Taster the cheesemonger, who had lain in state all the  week at his house in Thames-Street, and was going to be deposited with his  ancestors in White-chapel burying-ground.

This illustrious personage was, I believe, the first of his family, that ever thought of riding in a coach, living or dead : he was the son of a butcher in White-chapel, and died indeed but in indifferent circumstances: his widow however, for the honour of her family, was resolved at all events to bury him handsomely."

Another criticism.

"It was the custom, in the time of the plague, to fix a mark on those  houses in which any one had died. This probably may have given rise  to the general fashion of hanging up an atchievement. 

(Ah-ha! The source of that strange word, "hatchment" for the crest of the deceased hung upon the door. I've always wondered about the origin of that.)

However this be,  it is now designed as a polite token that a death has happened in the family, and might reasonably be understood as a warning to keep people  from intruding on their grief.

No such thing is, indeed, intended by it: I am therefore of opinion, that it ought every-where to be taken  down after the first week. Whatever outward signs of mourning may be preserved, no regard is ever paid to them within : the same visitings, the fame card-playings, are carried on as before ; and so little  respect is shewn to the atchievement, that if it happens (as it often does) to intersect one of the windows in the grand apartment, it is occasionally removed, whenever the lady dowager has a route or  drummajor.This naturally leads me to consider how much the customary suits of solemn black, and the other trappings and signs of woe, are  become a mere farce and, matter of form only."

A complaint about excessive black.

"When a person of distinction goes out of the world, not only the relations, but the whole household, must be cloathed in sable. The kitchen-wench scours  her dishes in crape, and the helper in the stables rubs down his  horses in black-leather breeches. Every thing must put on a dismal appearance: even the coach must be covered and lined with black.

This  last particular, it is reasonable to imagine, is intended (like a death's head on the toilet*) to put the owner constantly in mind, that  the pomp of the world and all gay pursuits are but vain and  perishable.

*I'm not sure what this means. Not a skull on the loo, obviously, but what? Any ideas?

Yet what is more common than for these dismal vehicles to wait at the doors of the theatres, the opera-house, and other public places of diversion? Those who are carried in them are as little affected by their dismal appearance as the horses that draw them ; I once saw with with great surprize an harlequin, a scaramouch, a shepherdess and a black satin devil, get into a mourning coach to go to a jubilee masquerade.

If I should not be thought to lay too much stress on the lesser formalities observed in mourning, I might mention the admirable method  of qualifying the melancholy hue of the mourning ring, by enlivening it with the brilliancy of a diamond. I knew a young lady, who wore on the same finger a ring set round with death's heads and cross marrow bones  for the loss of her father, and another prettily embellished with burning hearts pierced through with darts, in respect to her lover."

 Mourning rings were a huge part and a large expense. They were given to mourners at the funeral.

From Costume of Colonial Times, which from other research was usually the same as in Britain except a little later.

"These mourning rings were of gold, usually enamelled in black. They were frequently decorated with a death's - head or a coffin with a skeleton lying in it, or a winged skull. Often they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his mouth.A favorite motto was "Death parts United Hearts." Others bore the legend: "Prepare for Death;" another, "Prepared be to follow me." Some funeral rings bore a family crest in black enamel.

The story is told of Doctor Samuel Buxton, of Salem, Mass., — who died in 1758, aged eighty-one years, — that he left to his heirs a quart tankard full of mourning rings which he had received at funerals.

That might have been a tidy inheritance!

Black gloves were part of mourning, and also sometimes sent to mourners as a gift. Black-headed pins were available, for pins were much used to fix women's dress. There was also black sealing wax and black edged paper, which led to another complaint.

"But what I most of all admire is the odd contrivance, by which persons  spread the tidings of the death of their relations to the most distant  parts, by the means of black-edged paper and black sealing wax. If it were possible to inspect the several letters that bear about them these external tokens of grief, I believe we should hardly ever find  the contents of the fame gloomy complexion : a luscious sonnet, or an  amorous billet-doux would be much oftener found to be conveyed under these dismal passports, than doleful ditties or reflections on  mortality : and indeed these mock signs of woe are so little attended to, that a person opens one of these letters with no more concern than is felt by the postman who brings it. "

Fascinating, isn't it?

Anyone have anything to add about Georgian mourning?

Jo

(1) A New Wench! (2) Winners

A NEW WENCH:

On Wednesday, June 16, our new demi-Wench makes her debut.  We're very excited, and hope you will be to.  Be sure to drop by on Wednesday and find out who the new Wench will be and join us in welcoming her to Wenchlandia.

WINNERS:

We have two more winners!  Congratulations to Julie Spurgeon who won a book from Mary Jo Putney and to Fran Colley (Hellion) who won a book from guest Eileen Dreyer. 

Since some of you have asked for details on winners for specific Wenches, I've listed below, the winners for the past two months.  From now on, when we list winners in our Sunday announcements, I'll provide details that will help you correlate winners to Wenches (as I've done above).  We appreciate your feedback on this. 

A reminder--we post winners in three places: in Sunday announcements, in the Winners sidebar to the right, and in the monthly newsletter (sign up for the newsletter in the sidebar on the right).  If you're a regular commenter, your chances are good that you'll eventually be picked as a book winner. Same thing for new commenters--while we have no problem awarding books to repeat winners, we also like to give everyone a fair chance, so if you're new to the blog, be sure to leave a comment! 

Here is a look at the winners for the last two months.  The winner's name is on the left and the Wench or guest they won the book from is in parentheses:

Pearl Graham (guest Miranda Neville)
Nina Paules (Susan)
Donna Kenney (Mary Jo)
Anne Roller (Jo)
Patricia Barraclough (guest Joanna Bourne)
Terry Wright (4th anniversary winner)
Virginia Campbell (guest Louise Allen)
Dolores Feagin (Andrea)
Jackie Wilson (Jo)
Julie Spurgeon (Mary Jo)
Julie Poorman (Anne)
Fran Colley (guest Eileen Dreyer)

Welcome Eileen Dreyer!

Pat here, playing librarian and introducing you to Eileen Dreyer, author of Barely a Lady, the first book in the Drake's Rakes Regency series. Eileen is a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller with 36 books in romance, suspense and paranormal written as Eileen Dreyer and Kathleen Korbel. She was the
4th member inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame, so she's been winning the hearts of readers since the beginning of her career. Eileen always has a lot of fun things to say, so let's dive right in--

How did you start writing?  Were you making up stories in kindergarten with a pencil clutched in one chubby fist, or did you come to the trade later? 

I can actually remember the exact day I started writing. I was ten, and I had just found out that not only had I read every Nancy Drew book in the library, but that there wouldn't be another one out for a year. I was devastated. What would I do without Nancy? (my mother wanted me to read Dickens. I was not enthusiastic). And then, the light literally went on. "Wait," I thought, just as millennia of writers did before me. "I can write my own book. And I can make it turn out the way I want." So I did. By seventh grade I figured out that if I wrote adventure stories about my friends and famous people(the Beatles), I would always have somebody looking for me in the morning.

 
2.  How did you become interested in writing Regency?

Actually, I came at it via Richard Sharpe.  Years ago I stumbled over the Sharpe series about the Peninsular Wars and was hooked on the period. (I know. Not the traditional route to Regency. I didn't read Heyer til I was 35. But it's important to remember that I was raised in a house with seven men. I can tell you every movie John Wayne died in. I had no idea who Shirley Temple was until she was delegate to the UN.) (Pat note--another wordwench gratuitous photo of Sean Bean as Sharpe!)

  I found it to be a fascinating era. The world was in turmoil, balanced on the edge of the industrial revolution, at war, but still with very definite rules and social mores to define society. There was frivolity, but there was also wit and passion and sacrifice. And they bathed. Very important to me in a romance. I've been wanting to write a book in the period since, but haven't had the chance til now.

3.  What was your first book, and how well do you think it characterizes your latest work? 

  My first book was a Silhouette Desire entitled Playing the Game that I wrote as Kathleen Korbel. I believe that the main thing that characterizes both that and my latest work is the strong heroine. She's in a different time period and facing different challenges, but she meets them head-on. She's the person I hope I would be in that situation.  And it has a hero I think worthy of my heroine, who doesn't just love her(madly), but respects her.

4.  What was the biggest mistake you made when you first began writing?

 Oh, I made them all. The two that are probably most common were beginning my book three chapters before it really began(I know you've heard it. "This book really starts at the beginning of chapter three, or four. The rest is backstory). I rewrote the opening of the first manuscript I attempted twelve times, until I'd whittled away all that excess exposition, and the book started with the action. The second mistake was that I didn't research enough about publishing before sending my stuff out there. I sent my proposals to the wrong houses, the wrong editors and in the wrong form. There was no RWA near me when I started, and so I was winging it on my own. It didn't take too many terse rejection letters to figure it out.
 

5.  Which of your characters is your favorite, and why?

  Oh, lord. There have been so many, and I can't even remember all their names. But I tend to love the characters in my most recent works the best, simply because they're fresh and alive, having just stepped out onto the page. And while I love Olivia, who I think is one of my most complex heroines, in fact, I just finished the second book in the trilogy, NEVER A GENTLEMAN, about Olivia's friend Grace Fairchild, and right now Grace is my favorite. She is a plain woman. Not the typical romance 'she is transformed into a beauty by a new hairstyle and dress' plain. Fatally and unrelievedly plain. The daughter of a general who's spent her life following the drum, she finds herself coerced  into an untenable marriage with dilettante Diccan Hilliard. She has such quiet courage, loyalty, and, yes, grace. And a surprising sense of humor(at least to me). (Pat note--Huzzah! A plain heroine, finally! Thank you, thank you...)

6.  Which book, if any, was the most difficult for you to write, and why?

All of my suspenses, because although they are also character-driven, they are much more plot intensive. Considering the fact that I only have a vestigial left brain, wherein the linear plot lives, it is much more difficult, especially the middle of the book, which I call, "laying out clues, picking up clues, deciphering clues," which by necessity all has to be done with a certain amount of linear logic.
 

7.  What do you consider key elements of a great story?

Compelling characters caught in a compelling conflict (hmm. I seem to be having an alliterative moment). As Susan Elizabeth Phillips says, create characters you want to root for and put them into terrible trouble.

8.  Are there any trends you hope to see in romance in the next few years?

I love light, frothy romance. But there was a long time when that was all we got. I hope that the industry will support more of a  mix, so that we can also enjoy the more complex, deeper emotional books as well. (I'm sure that's not because that's what I write). After all, romance is a smörgåsbord. Don't limit us only to deviled eggs. (hear ye, hear ye, o gods of fate!--Pat)
 
9.  What is the best part about being a writer?  The most frustrating?

 Are you kidding? Do you know what my job is? I daydream for a living. And then, when I come up with an idea, I get to go learn about something I don't know, be it Tactical EMS (yes, I am trained to be a SWAT medic) or Waterloo.  And I've been able to travel to great places and learn things most tourists don't know, because I can say, "I'm an author, and I'm researching....". It continues to amaze me how generous people are with information and time.

The most frustrating? I think it's that nobody really understands what I do every day but another writer. Even my husband, who gives me unconditional support, really can't get his head around the fact that I often spend days just wandering aimlessly as words chase around in my head. Once he came home from work. "What did you do today?" he asked.
I was feeling full of myself. "I know why the bad guy did what he did!" I crowed.
He nodded. "What else did you do?"
My face fell. "That took me six weeks!"

When I called my critique partner Karyn Witmer-Gow and told her, her answer was. "Let's drink!"

So let's drink to creativity and writers and new books by giving away an autographed copy of Barely a Lady to a randomly drawn commenter. Does anyone have questions for Eileen while she's here?

 

There’s Something About a Soldier: Romance and the Military

by Mary Jo

It’s no accident that military heroes feature frequently in romances, whether they’re medieval knights or modern day SEALs.  Soldiers and sailors are generally fit and hunky, and in modern day stories, they may be tough, capable females as well as males. 

Creating a military protagonist is shorthand for a number of traits: courage, honor, loyalty, and a willingness to put the needs of others above one’s one needs.  Romance shares these powerful values, so characters with such traits make admirable heroes and heroines. 

Also, romances and love in general often involve nurturing, and war can create characters in grave need of nurturing and healing.  Wounded heroes are a particular specialty of mine.  The hero of my May book, Never Less Than a Lady, is one a such. 

Usually military service is back story because I want to focus on consequences and a developing relationship, but in my book Shattered Rainbows , I went onto the field of Waterloo, so I’ll be giving away a copy of that book to one commenter on this post.

I got the idea for a military appreciation blog when I read the most recent SOS America blog by Kim Lowe.  Kim is a former Air Force captain and current major in the reserves and military spouse.  Long-time Word Wench readers may remember a lovely post she did called Sisterhood of the Service, a discussion of the bonds uniting military spouses. 

Today the Word Wenches are the site of Kim’s Wandering Wednesday blog, so I encourage you to click over to her site to see how she met most of the Wenches.  In addition, I’ve asked other Wenches for their feelings on writing the military into romance, and I’ll end with a piece written by Kim Lowe. 

Nicola Cornick:

I’ve always loved reading romance books with a military thread or background. As someone who comes from a family with military connections, it was one of the proudest moments of my life when I was given the honorary rank of major in the UK army when I worked in a military college. That role also gave me the opportunity to meet men and women in the armed forces of over 40 countries around the world and observe at close quarters the qualities I admire in them: strength of character, courage, integrity – and perfect time-keeping.

The first military hero I wrote was in my third book, The Larkswood Legacy. He was a British Navy captain who had been accused of cowardice at the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1812 and had to clear his name.

More recently I have written two military heroes in my forthcoming series. There’s another Navy man (yes, I’m drawn to them!) who is an explorer. A line in one of my research books summed up the idea of the nineteenth century British naval officer for me: “There were lots of young officers anxious for adventure and promotion. They were efficient and daring with polish and dash.” The series also features an American sea captain with all those qualities and more, and an Irish revolutionary hero fighting for the French!

In writing the series I was inspired by a song called Love Farewell that I heard on the Help for Heroes website. It’s a song from the Napoleonic Wars sung by folk singer and actor John Tams, best known for playing the Rifleman Daniel Hagman in the TV series Sharpe, and The Band and Bugles of The Rifles. It’s poignant and heroic and I think as relevant now as it was in the Napoleonic Wars.

Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens:

Strength, honor, discipline—I think military heroes, especially ones in a historical romance, conjure up a certain image for most readers. There's also a swashbuckling aura of danger to them, which adds to their allure. Growing up, I loved the Horatio Hornblower series, and then became a great fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books and Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe series.

You have to admit, there's something awfully attractive about devil-may-care bravery and calm courage under fire. And then there's the uniform . . . an officer in his regimentals cuts such a dashing figure. (Remember all the excitement in Pride and Prejudice when the army takes up residence in Merryton!)

When I look at a portrait of Wellington in all his glory, I see someone who exudes an air of quiet self-confidence.  It's hard not to find that appealing. (On a personal note, I've another reason for thinking men look quite handsome in uniform—here are my father and mother just before their wedding.)

I haven't written too many military men, but it just so happens that the hero in my just-released book is a war hero-turned-artist. For me, it was really interesting to juxtapose a soldier's stoic toughness with a softer, more sensitive side. Steel swords crossed with sable paint brushes-I hope readers will find the mix intriguing.

Jo Beverley:

I realize that what fascinates me about military men is the uniqueness of the experience, which I see reflected in the writings of  Georgian and Regency military men. Some relate adventures with exuberance while others write of trials and anguish, and often there's not much to choose between what actually happened. Some look back in sorrow, but others sigh for the good old days.

In my books, Cyn Malloren (My Lady Notorious) fights his brother Rothgar to get into the  army. Christian Hill in A Secret Wedding is raring to go, as is Van Vandeimen, (The Demon's Mistress), dragging his friends, George Hawkinville and Con Somerford with him.

Con  (The Dragon's Bride) is a different type. He becomes a soldier because he's a second son and his friends are doing it, but he's happy to become a civilian when he inherits the family estate. Only duty sends him back, because there was such a shortage of experienced officers for Waterloo, and it almost breaks him.

The third of these "three heroes" is George Hawkinville (The Devil's Heiress), my military geek. He gets a commission in a cavalry regiment, but is soon grabbed by the Quartermaster's division and put to work on the chess-like administration of troop movements and provisioning. He loves the work but feels guilty about how rarely he sees action.

I wrote Hawk that way because I think romance novels don't pay enough attention to the support services. One day, I want to do an engineer.

Anne Gracie:

I've had a number of military heroes — all former soldiers, rather than currently active. I've never set a book during the war (the Peninsular/Napoleonic  war that is) — I'll leave that to Bernard Cornwell, who wrote the magnificent, action-packed Sharpe series. My main interest is in soldiers after they return home and try to settle back into civilian life again. I often like to write about people whose lives are in transition in some form.

My very first book, Gallant Waif, had a hero who'd been a soldier, and a heroine who'd been caught up in war, too. They'd both been wounded in very different ways — he physically, she emotionally — and because they each understood the reality of what the other had endured, they were able to save and heal each other.

My current series is also about former soldiers, friends who've returned from the war and are now trying to carve out a life for themselves back home— or trying to avoid it, as the case may be. Most of them don't have strong family ties and the brotherly camaraderie that forms between soldiers during war is an important factor in what sustains them.

In Australia we call that kind of friendship mateship, and my father had it with his two brothers-in-law, who were both in the army with him. They knew they could call on the others for help at any time, and they'd get it, promptly and with no questions asked. They never would ask, of course — men of pride, one and all — but they knew they could. It's that kind of friendship that's between the men in my "devil riders" series.

From our new Word Wench, who will make her bow on June 16th:

I haven't written a straightforward military hero yet, but when I wanted to put a man in charge of a band of a canny, suspicious, formidable undercover operatives, I made him a former military officer with battlefield experience. 

In the planning stages of the book I wondered -- should I make my hero even more skilled and lethal than his men?  The best marksman, the best wrestler, the best knife wielder?  Should the leader of this group be the über-fighter? 

That's heroic on a visceral level.  We love a man strong enough to defend his family and his home.

But the more I looked at my story, the more convinced I became that particular fighting skills were pretty much irrelevant.  My hero ruefully admits he's not much of a knife fighter.  What I needed was somebody the others would trust and follow without question.

Officers are not necessarily the most deadly individual fighters themselves.  They have good judgement, a cool head under fire, and an absolute, practical dedication to the welfare of their men.  They make a military unit into a cohesive strike force instead of fifty separate fighters.

That's why I wanted a military hero.  Because of the teamwork.  Because of the leadership.

USAF Captain Kim Lowe (ret.):

When asked why I read romance books, I respond, “It’s an escape from military life.”   But is it?   I enjoy historicals, particularly Regencies, because I have lived in Europe.  I’ve toured picturesque towns, crumbling castles, and historic battlefields.  I’ve experience other cultures, savored different food, and seen history in the making, including the fall of the Berlin Wall.  All because of the military.  

I appreciate writers’ creativity  – they celebrate life in the past, present, and future.  They give us hope that there is a Happily Ever After as their characters experience the same problems that we experience.  Romance writers engage in free speech, echoing the cliché, “Use it or loose it.”   Writers’ characters, settings, and plots remind us why we have free speech – our world is diverse.  In respecting diversity, we respect ourselves.  

In the end, I discovered that romance writing mirrors military life.  Like the military, romance writers seek to improve themselves through education.  Like the military, romance writers strive for individual achievement and encourage others at the same time.   Like the military, romance writers work as a team to improve their work product and work environment.   Romance writers embrace “life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” that the military have taken an oath to defend. Thus, the military’s sacrifices are not in vain.

I write a monthly newsletter for Kathyrn Falk’s military charity, Support Our Soldiers (SOS) America Inc.  I promote romance reading, military issues, international travel, and Hawaiian culture.  I also publish a weekly column, Wednesday Wanderings, to visit special places around the world and Internet.  The blogsite is open to all to encourage a cultural exchange between military and non-military readers.  Come over this week for Wednesday Wandering to learn how I became a fan of the Word Wenches.

************************************************************

My thanks to Kim Lowe and my sister Wenches for sharing thoughts on the intersection of romance and the military.  As I said above, I’ll send a copy of Shattered Rainbows, my Waterloo story (though that’s only a small part of the book), to someone who comments on this post before midnight Thursday.  Share what you think about military elements in romance. (Note: when I was putting together this blog, Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe came up a lot!)

And to all those brave men and women who have served this country—thank you for your service.

Mary Jo

Bubbling through Bath

Cara/Andrea here, battling through power outages here in Connecticut, so sorry for the delay!

In keeping with our recent travel theme, I’m talking today about the city of Bath—which for many of us is a foreign destination, albeit not quite so exotic as Delphi or the Acropolis. It has, however, a rich and fascinating history, with ties to the ancient Romans as well as the native Celtic tribes. So when it came to choosing a setting for Alessandra, my current heroine in To Surrender To A Rogue who is an expert in classical antiquities, I immediately thought of Bath. What more perfect place for a Regency story involving art, romance and a dash of mystery! So let’s take a quick dive into history . . .

According to legend, Bath was founded by Prince Bladud, father of King Lear, who suffered from leprosy. Banished from his realm, he was forced to herd pigs, who also suffered from a skin ailment. However when the animals bathed in the thermal mud and waters they were supposedly cured—as was a grateful Bladud, who established a city on the site.

Its reputation as a powerful healing spot also attracted the invading Romans, who created a magnificent temple and thermal baths in 50 AD dedicated to Sul, a Celtic river goddess and Minerva, the Roman Goddess of healing. They named the city Aqua Sulis (the waters of Sul), and today these Roman constructions are still very much in evidence, serving as a popular tourist attraction. In case you are wondering, the temperature of the water when it comes up from the ground is 116 degrees Farenheit and contains 43 different minerals. The main spring produces approximately 240,000 gallons per day, and astonishingly enough, it still circulates through the original Roman plumbing.

The first monarch of Britain, King Edgar, was crowned in Bath over 1,000 years ago. In the Middle Ages, Bath became a center for making woolen cloth. (Regency readers may recognize the term Bath superfine) The industry declined in later centuries, but the healthful hot springs remained very popular. (In the early 1600s, Anne of Demark, wife of James I came seeking a cure for dropsy.) By the mid-1660s, its mineral water was being bottled and sold around England.

For Georgian and Regency readers, Bath really took shape during the 18th century, when a group of rare talents combined to change the architectural and social landscape of Bath, transforming it into a fashionable watering hole for the rich and famous. Architect John Wood the Elder laid the foundation with his creation of Queen Square and The Circus in the early 1700s. His son, John Wood the Younger then designed the famous Royal Crescent and the original Assembly Rooms. Robert Adam followed with the glorious Pulteney Bridge, named after the first Earl of Bath, in 1774.

According to Matthew Hargraves, in his book Great British Watercolors, Bath has been described as “probably the only holiday resort city designed in good taste.” With its rich, golden limestone, elegantly proportioned buildings and lovely gardens, it exuded style and sophistication. Indeed, the author Tobias Smollett had one of his characters call it “an earthly paradise.”

A big part of its social allure was due to the efforts of the legendary Richard “Beau” Nash. From 1704 through his death in 1762, he served as “Master of Ceremonies” for city, overseeing the Assemblies and establishing the rules of propriety for most all leisure activities. He was, in effect, the arbiter of style, and set the “ton” for proper behavior. (One of his decrees was that all balls should end at 11 pm so that people could get their proper rest.) Under his guidance, Bath flourished.

Like the spas towns of today, Bath during the Regency era attracted a well-heeled crowd looking for both relaxation and entertainment. The Pump Room, where people came to take a glass of the mineral water known as “Bath champagne” was de rigeur for a daily promenade. People came to exchange gossip and to see and be seen. In the evening there were balls, assemblies, card parties, and other activities, such as evening picnics in Sydney Gardens. Though the etiquette was a bit more informal than that of London, there were still plenty of rules governing every little detail of daily life. One of my favorite fashion decrees reads: “That no gentleman in boots or half-boots be admitted into the Ball-Rooms on ball-nights, except Officers of the Navy, or of the Army on duty, in uniform; and then without their swords. Trowsers or coloured pantaloons not to be permitted on any account.”

Countless Regency romances are, of course, set in Bath, beginning with Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Austen, who lived there from 1801-1806, was not a great fan of the city—she thought it “ a place of vapor, shadow, smoke and confusion.” However, her heroine, Catherine Morland, sees it a little differently: "Here are a variety of amusements, a variety of things to be seen and done all day long, which I can know nothing of there...I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath--I do like it so very much... Oh, who can ever be tired of Bath." Persuasion, one of my personal favorites, is another Austen book that comes to its conclusion amidst the dancing and promenading of the beau monde in Bath. Georgette Heyer was also fond of Bath as a setting for her stories. Regency Buck and Bath Tangle give a delightful glimpse of life in the city.

Have you been to Bath? And have you a favorite novel set in the city? I sheepishly confess that I’ve not yet had a chance to visit, so all my descriptions are based on photographs and eyewitness accounts. I can just imagine how beautiful the honey-colored afternoon light must look drizzling over the limestone. Sigh. It’s on my list for the next visit to England.

And to celebrate the June release of To Surrender To A Rogue, a winner will be chosen at random from those who leave a comment here between now and Wednesday morning to receive a signed copy of the book.

Sunday Announcements

This coming week is a busy one for the Wenches:

PATRICIA RICE:

On Monday, June 7, Pat will begin her blog tour (to promote her new book, The Wicked Wykerly) starting with Sue Grimshaw at Borders, http://bordersblog.com/trueromance/.   

CARA ELLIOTT:

On Tuesday, June 8, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, Cara will be interviewed on BlogTalk Radio, to promote her latest release, To Surrender to a Rogue, as well as talk about the craft of writing.

MILITARY APPRECIATION:

Military heroes appear frequently in Romance novels.  On Wednesday, June 9, Mary Jo talks about military heroes with returning guest, Kim Adams.

GUEST EILEEN DREYER:

Rounding out the week, Pat will interview 5-time RITA winner Eileen Dreyer.  Drop in for a visit and say "Hi" to Eileen.

NEW WENCH:

And just to keep the suspense going, this is a reminder that we will be bringing a new Wench on board next Wednesday, June 16!  Her identity will be kept under wraps until then. *evil laughter* 

WINNERS:

We've had a slew of winners recently.  Congratulations to the following:  Anne Roller, Patricia Barraclough, Jackie, Virginia Campbell, TxDee, Julie Poorman, and Terry Wright (our 4th anniversary winner). 

PINO TRIBUTE:

Please scroll down for the next post, a tribute to Pino, one of the greatest cover artists of all time.

Pino Tribute

On May 25 one of the greatest romance cover artists of all time passed away at the age of 71.  Italian-born Pino Daeni illustrated book covers for Italian publishers from 1960 to 1979.  Classically trained in fine art, his paintings appeared in several major exhibitions throughout Italy and Europe during this time.  After moving to America in 1979, he illustrated covers for most of the major NY publishers from 1980 to 1993.  Known professionally by the single name of Pino, he created illustrations for over 3,000 novels. His covers were wildly popular for their freshenss, sensuality, and lush colors.

Some of the Wenches are fortunate enough to have covers done by Pino. Here's what Mary Jo Putney had to say about Pino:

"There was a time in the golden days of historical romance when having a Pino cover was news that made an author squeal and phone all her friends.  He was that good, and that distinctive.  Pino was Italian and loved women, and that showed in the lush, evocative way he painted them.  His work could always be spotted by the beautiful fluid brushwork and marvelous colors.

"One of my books, Silk and Secrets, was set in Central Asia and featured a caravan trip across the desert to Bohkara.  I made a big point with the art director that these were Bactrian camels, not Dromedaries.  Two humps, not one! 

"To clarify that, I sent in a photocopy of a line of Bactrians snaking across the desert.  When Pino’s illustration arrived, there in the background was the image from my photocopy.  He’d painted the camels in and added riders and baggage.  Perfect!  Not only a fine painter, but a smart painter.  That original painting hangs in my living room, and I still love it.  (It doesn’t hurt that the characters look fabulous!)

"His concentration on fine art in his latter years was art’s gain, romance’s loss.  Fortunately, his work lives on."

Susan King also had some Pino covers:

"For the stepback of The Raven's Moon, Pino created two gorgeous paintings, one of the hero and heroine, the other of the hero on horseback. The stepback with the hero and heroine is unusual among Pino's covers, as the heroine is completely clothed in male garments; the unique pose of the hero and heroine conveys an emotional tenderness (interesting that the hero looks out, connecting with the viewer/reader). The male model was Michael O'Hearn, who was Mr. Universe that year and several years since (I once met Michael, who told me that this one was his personal favorite of the romance covers he had done, since he could proudly show it to his mother!).

"Some of my Italian translations had Pino covers, including Il cuore nella Foresta (English title, The Black Thorne's Rose). Here Pino paints what is almost a prelude to his later work--sensitive, painterly images of half-nude women seen from the back, glancing over a shoulder, caught in a vulnerable moment."

For more examples of Pino's paintings, go here. 

The Grand Tour

 Anne here, inspired to talk about about the Grand Tour. I've been reading Pat Rice's blog about her recent trip to Greece and Rome, also Nicola's blog about her recent canal trip (scroll down,) some reminiscences by a few wenches about places they've been, and finally, Wench Andrea/Cara headed off to Morocco and is sending back delicious morsels of travel snippets. And all the time my feet have been growing itchier — and no, this isn't about athlete's foot. It's travel my feet itch for, new paths, new places, new sights and smells and sounds. But alas, I'm not going anywhere except virtually. Hence my own little blog about the Grand Tour...

The Grand Tour - what it was supposed to be  

From the seventeenth century onwards, the Grand Tour was the traditional coming-of-age experience for young men of the British upper class — a rite of passage. It is said that the original practice arose when the sons of Royalists were sent out of England, away from Oliver Cromwell and his henchmen, to the safety of the continent. Apart from saving their lives, it also benefited the young men, to see and experience the life, politics and culture of other countries, so it grew to become a kind of finishing" process for aristocratic young men. 

After completing their education at Oxford or Cambridge, young men of means would be dispatched, usually in the care of a respectable scholar or tutor or a minister, to tour the continent, absorb the culture, view the remnants of classical antiquity (a large part of their education had been based on Latin and Ancient Greek) and "finish" their education by seeing the actual places and art works instead of simply reading about them and seeing black and white drawings or copies, to hear the concerts and operas by the greatest musicians of their day and so on. We're so spoilt for that today, having the finest music and the world's best art at our fingertips.

The young men would also practice and improve their language and social skills. The intention was that they would leave England, a callow youth and return, a mature man of some sophistication and polish.

What it often was:

In practice, many of the young men were as interested in fine art and ancient civilizations as young men today — in other words, not. For them the Grand tour was a chance to have adventures, particularly of the sexual kind — and some of the journals of these men chronicle their sexual adventures in much the same way as they related their experiences of the local cuisines, wines, social events and hunting expeditions. A slang term for the young men was "bear cups" and the tutor in charge of these young blades was known as a "bear leader" — you can imagine why. Pity the poor scholarly fellows, no doubt living a long-cherished dream of touring the sites they'd studied all their lives, but at the price of supervising a clutch of rich high-spirited young bloods, all out for a good time.  

Art aside, the Grand Tour was the young men's chance to learn how to go about in society, to practice their social skills and acquire polish among the aristocracy of Europe, to test themselves out in a variety of different situations, and if they disgraced themselves, they left the disgrace behind when they moved on. They experienced dangers, difficulties and hardships — they might be moneyed and travel with servants, but foreign travel was still arduous and dangerous — there were bandits in the mountains and pirates in the Mediterranean. The roads were often rudimentary, the hotels often a crude inn with a group dormitory — all the journals refer to being devoured by fleas, bedbugs and lice, and sickness from bad or spoiled food was common.

Not all the tourists were young men. Honeymooners, all kinds of people who could afford it and had a taste for adventure went. I have a book of letters from a young woman who traveled in a party with an Irish lord and his wife and various others. His wife gave birth several months into the trip, and the baby was simply delivered, then sent home with a nurse, while the parents continued on their journey. 

 They brought back souvenirs of all sorts -- often chunks of genuine antiquity — a kind of genteel vandalism, and thought nothing of carving their names in Roman columns and Greek temples — Lord Byron carved his initials in the Temple of Poseidon in Greece (see below). Grand Tourists also delighted in commissioning portraits of themselves by the most fashionable painters of the day, posed in front of some grand site of antiquity, or among famous works of art. So in demand were the top artists that it went to their head somewhat.  In 1758 Grand Tourist George Lucy wrote:
 'I have shown my face and person to the celebrated Pompeo Battoni, to take the lines thereof, I have sat twice & am to attend him Again in a day or Two; They are great men and must be flatter'd, for 'tis the Custom here not to think themselves obliged to you for employing them, but that they oblige you by being employed.'
 I love this Batoni portrait of Colonel the Hon. William Gordon posing amidst chunks of statutory in front of the Colosseum in a tartan garment that is part kilt, part toga. 

(If you'd like to read more about the history of the Grand Tour, I recommend a book by Christopher Hibbert, called The Grand Tour.)  

The Grand Tour Today

It's much the same today, isn't it? The bear leaders have disappeared, but the rite of passage is still very much in evidence. I'm not sure about other countries, but in Australia and New Zealand it's very much a rite of passage for young people to load up the backpack and head off to see the world, visiting Europe in particular, where many of our ancestors come from, but often traveling overland, through Asia, heading north, to Europe. Sometimes it's the "gap year" between school and university or between study and work, sometimes it's for an indefinite period. 

I've done it myself, several times, taking my first Grand Tour when I was twenty. A school friend and I headed off, landing in the UK, where we spent the first few nights sleeping on the floor of a tiny cramped flat in London where my friend's sister was living with three other girls. They'd all been there at least a year, and were working to amass enough money to fund the next stage of their travel. Some of them had been away from home five years or more, traveling alone, but meeting up with people along the way. They might have been homesick occasionally, but they were never lonely. This particular group worked as domestic staff, sourced through an employment run by two elderly, slightly eccentric and madly well connected and titled European ladies, who'd lost their fortunes in WW2 and now staffed half the stately homes of England and Abroad. And word of mouth kept their books full of Australian and NZ girls on working holidays.

And what a window it was into how the other half lived. The girls told tales of fantastic trips to the Caribbean or skiing in the Alps, where the nanny—of course— went too and was taught to ski or snorkel along with the kids. A friend of mine worked in a Scottish castle as a scullery maid and regularly had saucepans and more dangerous implements thrown at her by an irate and eccentric cook. Another had a job in Italy where all she had to do was drive the children to school each day and talk to them in English — the rest of the day was hers. When each girl moved on, they passed their contacts on — the  employment agency was very happy to employ girls who were educated, independent and resourceful. 

From the UK we went across country to Paris, through Italy and Germany, and though Yugoslavia to Greece. Greece them wasn't the slick tourist destination it is now. When I first went to places like Mykonos it was beautiful but simple -- not at all touristified, let alone expensive and sophisticated as it is now. It was more like the Greece that Mary Stewart and Gerald Durrel wrote about. Most of the ancient sites were unfenced and unguarded. One morning we climbed up to the Acropolis and had breakfast of bread, cheese and olives and coffee in a thermos, alone on top of the world as the sun came up -- not a soul in sight. Magic.

We had our share of adventures — ghastly accommodation, theft, being stranded, dodgy locals, bad food, illness, some scary and downright nasty moments, but I wouldn't trade them for anything. Traveling like that, more or less alone, dependent on our own wits and resources, dealing with whatever came up, tested us and gave us the kind of self confidence no amount of study can give.   

The next generation is doing the same kind of thing. My nephew was on his Grand Tour and stopped off in Scotland, where he's been for some years now, living, working, falling in love and getting married there. My niece stopped off in Bali on the way home and also fell in love and stayed. My original backpacking friend has a son in Vienna right now, and a daughter who recently came back from her own grand tour year away and another friend's son is in China.  Mind you, they skype and text and phone home, instead of sending the occasional post card as we did, but that's all to the good for anxious parents. 

Grey Nomads
  However travel isn't just for the young. Another rite of passage we have in Australia comes when people retire. It's very common here for people to head off on their own Grand Tour around Australia, sticking to the coast, more or less, and traveling in a loop around the whole country, often taking a year or more to do it, sometimes never returning home again. We even have a name for them — grey nomads. Do a google search for the term and you'll see what I mean. 

And just as it is with young people traveling, people meet up and connect and make friends and pass along advice and information. I like the sound of that. I'm not in grey nomad territory yet — I've still got a few overseas adventures in me yet, I think, but it's nice to know that when I finally grow up, I can become a grey nomad.

 So how about you— have you got itchy feet? Where would your dream trip take you? Is it a rite of passage for young people in your area to go traveling? Are any kids you know off somewhere exotic now? And do you have grey nomads? 

 I'll give away a copy of my own "Grand Tour" story— my second book, Tallie's Knight, to someone who leaves a comment.

It's Romantic Up North!

Nicola here, with a question that you don’t get asked every day: Can industrial history be sexy and romantic? On more than one occasion I have pitched to my editor the idea of a Regency historical set against a background of the industrial revolution. The response was a very definite “No, thank you”. And yet to my mind the huge changes in Georgian, Regency and Victorian society that came with the developments in engineering, technology and industry have enormous potential as the backdrop for a romance. There’s change, there’s conflict, there’s the clash of ideas. In Cranford it was the coming of the railway as much as the arrival of Dr Harrison that set hearts a-flutter. And I defy anyone to watch North and South with Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe as John Thornton and Margaret Hale and fail to see that the industrial North can be very romantic indeed. 

So when we planned a holiday on the Leeds to Liverpool Canal I decided to view it as a research trip as well as a vacation. Who knows – one day my editor may relent and my canal-based Regency may set sail. And in the meantime I am happy to be able to share with everyone the highlights of the trip and a few snippets of industrial history. I hope you enjoy the voyage!

A step back into the industrial past

The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was the first of the Trans-Pennine canals to be started and the last to be completed. The length and the complexity of the route meant that the canal took 46 years to build at a cost of five times the original budget. The canal originated from a proposal in 1765 to construct a canal from Preston to Leeds to carry woollen goods from Leeds and Bradford and limestone from Skipton. Prospective backers in Lancashire argued for the canal to start from Liverpool. The Yorkshire men wanted it to start in Leeds. Yes, Yorkshire and Lancashire were still arguing 300 years after the Wars of the Roses!

 

We picked up our narrow boat in a little village called Silsden in the Yorkshire Dales. Our boat, Golden Dale, was 56 foot long and designed for only two people. That meant that we would have to be prepared to open every lock and swing bridge ourselves. To add to the theme of romance on our “northern cruise” we were told that this was the honeymoon boat, but after we had struggled to open a few heavy bridges and steer through some narrow gaps and around some tight corners we reckoned that not everyone would still be talking to their partner after such stressful experiences as running aground or ramming another boat, let alone feeling in a honeymoon mood!

Literary Connections

Our first stop was at the village of Kildwick, which was very nostalgic for me as I had sung in the choir here when I was a child and had not been back for over 30 years. We moored for the night near Kildwick Hall, a stone mansion built in 1642. This was a literary diversion. During the period in which the Brontë sisters were writing the Currer family lived at Kildwick and when Charlotte Brontë sought a masculine nom de plume she chose the pseudonym of Currer Bell. Miss Frances Currer (1785-1861) who was known as a scholar and collector of books lived at Kildwick Hall at that time and may have been known to the Bronte family. Certainly Heathcliff’s home in Wuthering Heights bears a striking resemblance to Kildwick Hall and the house was also used as the setting for Thrushcross Grange in the 1920s silent movie version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

His Own Personal Canal

Moving at a pace of about three miles an hour (canal travel is not to be hurried!) we reached the ancient market town of Skipton the next day and moored up to explore. I’ve blogged about the medieval castle and some other aspects of my trip on my personal blog here. As we came into Skipton we saw that many of the former warehouses and factories that were in use when the canal was a bustling industrial waterway have now been beautifully converted into flats and houses. Many retain their original features such as these curious jutting bays that feature in the photograph.

At Skipton there is a half mile branch canal that opened in 1797. This was a private canal belonging to Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet, who owned Skipton Castle and also the local limestone quarries. Lord Thanet had asked the canal company to divert the main Leeds to Liverpool Canal in order to carry the limestone away for sale. This request had been refused. Lord Thanet’s solution – to build his own canal. As one did. We followed the Springs Branch, as this canal is called, on foot and ended walking through the beautiful woods behind Skipton Castle and admiring the impregnable fortress high on its precipice.

The Wonder of the Waterways

This unique double arched bridge west of Skipton is know as one of the wonders of the waterways because of its combination of beauty and practicality. The original bridge over th canal was built at the end of the 18th century but when road traffic became heavier it was not strong enough. The solution was to add another arch to carry the new road.

Locks!

There was originally a set of staircase locks here at Greenberfield but early in the nineteenth century these were replaced by a new set of six locks. The fields beside the canal are full of lumps and bumps where the original canal features have grassed over. Here were took pictures of the photogenic canal architecture including this charming original lock keeper’s cottage. And Andrew took a photograph of me struggling to open the locks in the heat of a summer day! Here I am below getting some welcome help from my sister-in-law who came out to spend a day on the boat with us and her family!

 

The canal prospered through the nineteenth century and was used for carrying stone, coal and many other goods. The impact of the railway age was not as great as with other canals but the coming of the lorry finally saw commercial traffic on the Leeds and Liverpool dwindling. Unlike many other canals, however, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was never abandoned, remaining open for navigation throughout the last century. It suffered some damage during the Second World War when it was breached by a German mine. I was fascinated to discover that the canal in west Lancashire was part of Britain's defensive plans against invasion. Along the canal there were tank traps, bunkers and block houses. Some buildings such as barns and pubs along the canal were fortified and there are still some remaining concrete pillboxes to be seen.

 

The Leggers

 

On our trip we got as far as the highest point on the canal, the summit level at  Foulridge, 487 and a half   feet above sea level. The Foulridge tunnel was opened in 1796. A tale that has passed into local folklore tells of a cow called Buttercup who fell into the canal and swam the whole mile length of the tunnel before being pulled out at the other end and revived with brandy. The tunnel has no towpath so in the days before mechanisation the boats had to be propelled through the tunnel by leggers. Two people were required. They would lie on a plank across the bow of the boat, and holding the plank with their hands, would propel the boat with their feet against the tunnel wall. While the boat was being legged through the tunnel, the horse would be led over the hill. Leggers were only replaced by steam tugs in 1880. I couldn't help feeling that this would have been a very dangerous pastime. The tunnel has one way traffic only, is very, very wet inside and is full of bats!

 

I hope you have enjoyed this miniature travelogue. Now over to you - have you ever read a Regency with a background of the industrial revolution? Or a historical novel you enjoyed that featured some element of industrial history rather than the customary diversions of high society? Do you think that a historical romance set in the industrial north would appeal to you? Should I continue to pitch the idea to my editor??? Thank you!