Word Wenches

What We're Reading in August

Joanna here:  Season of Mists and Yellow Fruitfulness it may be, but I'm not getting ANY reading done.  You will have heard this excuse before many times. I think I may be the least readingest of all the Wenches. I'm rereading the Lymond Chronicles of Dorothy Dunnett. I'm embarked on the Game of Kings just at the moment. Rereading it is very different from reading it for the first time which was full of "Wow. I want to write that," but also a good bit of "What?" "Huh?" Also beginning and not yet very far into The Natural History of Dragons, of which you have heard other Wenches speak. I'm enjoying it.

 

Here's what Nicola has to say:

I came back from the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference buzzing with ideas and weighed down with a pile of fabulous books I am now reading my way through. First was Here’s To Us by Elin Hilderbrand. I hadn’t come across her books before; here in the UK they aren’t as well-known as in the US but I am so glad I have found her because I didn’t want to put the book down. I loved the exploration of complicated family relationships, the twists, the tensions and the resolutions. I loved the characters and the way that they interacted and found the writing style so crisp and clear. Even more I loved her descriptions of Nantucket which were so rich and vivid that I felt as though I was there! I’m on the hunt for her other books now.

Next I picked up Midsummer Dreams by Alison May. It’s a clever re-imagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a contemporary setting. I’m only part of the way through but I am really enjoying the way that Alison has created characters who feel real and warm and alive. It’s funny and poignant and she really pins down the emotional conflicts. As it’s one of a series inspired by Shakespeare I can see myself reading the whole lot!

 

 

 

Anne says:

MY LITTLE PARIS BOOKSHOP, by Nina George

The story is about a man, Jean Perdu, who runs a bookshop— or what he calls 'a literary apothecary' in a lovely old restored barge on the Seine River in Paris. Jean has a gift for finding just the right book for each customer, a balm for what ails you. He can heal anyone except himself—he's locked in a frozen past (Perdu is French for 'lost')—until a new person arrives in his apartment complex and Jean's frozen present begins to develop cracks. What follows is an adventure of the heart — but be aware, this not genre romance. 

I savored it and, having read a lot of books, enjoyed recognizing the various titles Jean offered his customers. I loved the setting and the layered intrigue of the characters. It's an international best-seller.  I bought it as an e-book, but I'm buying the paper version, as it's a keeper. As Library Journal (who gave it one of their coveted starred reviews) said "if ever a book was meant to be read over and over, this gem is it.”

 

You get two covers for the price of one, because different

 TRUST by Kylie Scott

Kylie Scott is famous for her gritty rock star series, but this is a new area for her — YA (Young Adult.) TRUST has only been out for a week or two, but it already has several hundred reviews. I devoured it in a night.

Kylie Scott has a gift for putting two fairly ordinary young people in an extraordinary situation, and then showing them learn to cope, and grow stronger from the experience. She has a deep understanding of the pressures and conflict that young people today have to deal with. TRUST is a coming-of-age story, and also a romance. Highly recommended.

  

THE CHILBURY LADIES' CHOIR by Jennifer Ryan

I think I picked this up from a wenchly recommendation. Life in a small English village during WW2, when normal village life is challenged and disrupted and people discover new talents and strengths in themselves. I enjoyed it very much.

 

Andrea/Cara has two books for us, one by a fellow Wench:

I was so happy to receive my copy of Nicola’s The Phantom Tree from Book Depository recently. (It’s not yet out in the U.S. but Book Depository has free shipping worldwide so you to can snatch it up—which I highly recommend!) It’s a riveting time slip story, with the action moving back and forth between Elizabethan England and the present day. The plot revolves around the heroine seeing a small portrait in a modern-day antique shop that's just created a news buzz by being identified as a lost-lost painting of Anne Boleyn. But the heroine knows that’s wrong . . .

 

I’m not all that familiar with Tudor times, so I loved learning about the intricate politics and family connections as well as aspects of everyday life. The writing is beautifully evocative—the manor homes like Wolf Hall and the surrounding countryside come brilliantly alive. And the characterizations are richly nuanced, both with the actual historical figures and how they entwine with the fictional ones. Nicola creates a wonderfully provocative “what-if” story for Mary Seymour, who in real life was presumed to have died in childhood. I don’t want to give away too much of the mystery twists . . . But add to the plot the heroine’s former flame, a dishy modern historian who has his own hit TV show, and things heat up as they delve deeper into the mystery of the portrait—which brings about some other surprising revelations! It’s a wonderfully layered and engaging story, and I was up until the wee hours of the morning finishing it because I just couldn’t put it down!

 

On a very different note, I also enjoyed My Life With Bob, whose subtitle is: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues. It’s part memoir, part musing on books by by Pamela Paul, the editor of the New York Times Book Review. As a shy, introverted high school student, she started to keep a notebook of every book she read, and over the last 28 years, she's kept it up, hauling the tattered volume around the world with her as she goes on life’s journeys, both physically and metaphorically. I like the way the official blurb describes it: "It’s about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader . . . It’s about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It’s about how we make our own stories.” There are times when she gets a little too self-consciously precious, but on the whole, it’s a fun, provocative read about how books shape our lives, providing solace, inspiration, escape, and often a prod to be better than we think we can be. And really, who among our Wench family here can resist a book about books!

 

So, what are you reading lately that delights, surprises, moves or intrigues you?

 

 

Craftsmanship and Comfort Zones

(This post originally ran on The Heroine Addicts in January, 2013, but I'm re-posting it here because now that I'm nearing the end of one book and the start of another, I'm thinking about this again...)

Often when I'm asked by other people to describe a writer's life, I use analogy. I tell them writing is a craft, and that like any craftsperson, a writer starts rock-bottom: as apprentice to the masters.

Like a cabinet-maker learning how to craft a chest of drawers, the writer takes the tools in hand, and learns the use of them, the tricks of them—the way to make a smoother-sliding drawer, to make the joints dovetail more neatly; how to polish and to decorate the piece until it's pleasing to the eye. Learn these lessons, and you'll make the upward climb of any craftsperson, no longer an apprentice but a journeyman, at work upon the masterpiece that will, in time, admit you as a worthy member of the guild.

What Lies Beneath

Nicola here. The sort of stately home visits I tend to make usually involve a gorgeously-furnished and decorated historic house, beautiful gardens, a gift shop and afternoon tea (or morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea to be more specific.) Those are usually the National Trust places or the Historic House Association. Alternatively I might go to a ruined castle or a site in the care of English Heritage and it’s always amazing and I learn a lot about the place and the people who lived there.

I’ve never “done” a stately home visit like the one I went on last week at Clandon Park in Surrey. Originally built, or re-built in the early 18^th century, Clandon is a Palladian-style mansion built for Thomas, 2^nd Baron Onslow. The interior of the house was completed in the 1740s and it was glorious, with a two storey, forty foot Marble Hall and stunning plasterwork ceilings. Described by the National Trust as “a gleaming white forty foot cube”, the hall must truly have been a jaw-dropping space and hugely impressive. It was the centrepiece of entertainment at the house, surrounded by other grand rooms and with two huge staircases and was designed to emphasise the status of the Onslow family.

 Other rooms, including the State Bedroom, were equally grand. The state bed was made in about 1710, with exquisite silk embroidered hangings, a reminder of the visits of King George I and George II. Although the bed was already 50 years old in 1778 it was described as “a noble and costly bedstead with hangings beautifully worked in a great variety of colours lined with sattin and superbly finished.” The bed was not used frequently; the last person to stay in it was the Princesse de Lamballe, a friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who was a guest in 1791 and was subsequently guillotined in the French revolution.

On April 29^th 2015 everything changed at Clandon Park when fire gutted the entire mansion. Everyone was evacuated safely but the house was left a shell. A complex salvage operation followed and plans have been made to rebuild Clandon in a way that pays tribute to its history but also creates different opportunities for the future. In the meantime, it’s possible to enter the house via a walkway to see both what has been lost and what survives. I found this a very poignant and moving experience. It’s so seldom one gets to see what lies beneath a grand house – I’ve only had the experience once before when we were undertaking conservation work at Ashdown House – and in the case of Clandon, of course, the reason for the opportunity a tragic one. And yet it’s also a way to see and learn new things – about how the house was built and decorated, about what is usually hidden underneath all that gorgeous decoration.

Standing in the Saloon the first thing that struck me was the noise. The house is completely covered to protect it from the weather
and the false roof and the scaffolding vibrate in the wind like an instrument. It adds a rather eerie quality to what is already a strange experience. This room has had many different roles in the history of the house. It has variously been used for dining, as a parlour, and as a billiards room. An inventory from 1778 noted that it was painted dark green and hung with oil paintings; it was used as an entrance from the gardens and as an extension to the Marble Hall. After the fire the room was full of debris from the floors above which collapsed into it and a huge amount of salvage work has been done here. One of the fine fireplaces survives which gives a flavour of the intricate decoration that was once in the room.

The Marble Hall still retains its floor, which is damaged and covered over, and if you take the walkway to the left you can see down into the basement of the building and up to the sky. All the beams and flooring have gone but the fireplaces and some of the statues remain. It was an extraordinary feeling to stand in that space, feel the emptiness and try to imagine the original grandeur.

In the state bedroom some of the wallpaper, panelling and even the plasterwork was saved so the traces of what was here before can still be seen. Our guide told us that the bed hangings had been saved because by a miracle they had been taken down for renovation and were still parcelled up when the fire started. Even more miraculously, the dining room next door, known as the Speaker’s Parlour, remained largely unscathed. It is hoped that this will be open to view again soon. Little by little the house comes back to life.

 In addition, other parts of the house have been revealing secrets that would otherwise not have been known. Down in the basement is a room that in the Victorian period was called “The Butler’s Room.” Once the fire debris had been cleared it became apparent that the floor there was different from the rest of the house and that it contained brick and tile. Drains have been found that date prior to the time the house was built and are the remains of a previous house on the site, a Jacobean mansion whose footprint lay hidden beneath and would never have been found but for the fire. Whilst in no way underplaying the devastating effects of the fire, our guide emphasised the positive opportunities they now have at Clandon to learn about its history and construction and to make exciting progress going forward into the future.

After the emotion of touring the house we went out into the gardens, a beautiful landscape created by Capability Brown which subsequent owners and generations added to with a parterre, grotto and Dutch garden. The Dutch garden is gorgeous and felt exactly the right place to sit and think about all we had seen at Clandon, both the terrible destruction but also the secrets revealed and the hope for the future.

You can find out more about Clandon Park and the restoration project here.

When we restored Ashdown House we found lots of hidden things, from old newspapers to a secret passageway beneath the building. Have you ever seen "behind the scenes" at a place that usually looks quite different, and did you find anything that would normally be hidden? Do you think it's important to restore old houses or other properties that have been damaged by natural disasters or should we move on and put the money to other uses?

Degrees of Separation

Susan here. Last year, my husband and I both did DNA testing, and the results have been fascinating—and somewhat unexpected. I thought I knew my genetic background – French, Italian, English on my father’s side, Irish and Scottish on my mother’s side. My husband thought he was English, Scottish and German. Surprise! The tests revealed lines we hadn’t known about, including ethnicities and haplo groups and neanderthal (I have less than average; my husband a bit more than average). Along with the DNA, a family member has been creating a family tree, and the DNA information is helping to fill out the branches.  

In considering the results and connections we've found, it's a bit of that six degrees of separation theory--proposed in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy, it holds that humans are so closely linked in families and activities that it’s possible to connect two people together by some thread or another within six steps. (A more playful version maintains that anyone can find a connection to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps.) 

The DNA spit test (literally) says I’m mostly British/Irish/Scottish, 25% French, some Italian and German too--and about 2% Ashkenazi Jew. That last is a nice surprise! Not all the info is there--for females, DNA tests track the maternal line more than the paternal (and vice versa, dad genes for guys), so I could have more Italian-origin DNA than these tests showed.

On the genealogy tree, my great-grandparents came directly from Scotland and Ireland, the other set from France and Italy—I knew that, and knew my French great-grandma well, and how interesting to see how far back some of those connections go. While we found no Jewish relatives in the tree, the DNA says it's there, a couple of centuries back. I'd love to know more. 

The husband, who thought he was English, Scottish and German, is nearly 90% British and Scandinavian (ha, no surprise to me--he looks like a Viking!). His DNA also shows 2% Native American. Genealogy research showed that he had an English ancestor who settled in North America in 1638 and married the daughter of a Piscataway chief. So he's directly descended, on his father's side, from a Native American princess. The English line in his family goes back to William Carey and wife Mary Boleyn, and through many generations to Charlemagne. Nice!!  

Back to Karinthy (and Bacon) and the six steps. I've always loved hearing about my great-grandparents and their families and their lives in other countries, long ago. Some wonderful family stories have been preserved (and photos, see my French great-grandma, age 18 in 1892, left).

So in thinking about the historical context, and those degrees of separation, it is fun to try to link our family tree to some historical people in six steps or less . . . .

** My great-grandmother was born in a farming village in Lorraine, France, a few miles from a little village called Domremy. She told stories, when I was little and she very old, of falling to her knees to pray in the wheat fields as the bells rang across the hills.

So . . . Great-Grandma—>a little village in Lorraine, France-->Domremy, Jeanne d’Arc's home village-->Joan of Arc is my confirmation saint-->which links me in a lovely little way to Joan of Arc. I have a shelf filled with books about Joan, and the history of her era, so that's yet another connection.

** Great-grandpa was born beside beautiful Lago Como, Italy, immigrating to America in his 20s. Great-grandpa—>Lake Como—>George Clooney—>me. (Not historical, but who cares!) 

** The husband has Viking DNA-->I quite like Vikings --> and have written books that involve them. Gap of separation bridged! And he’s descended from a Native American princess-->that's easy, when I was little, I wanted to BE an Indian princess (preferably TigerLily). Close enough for me!  

** A direct ancestor on my father's side was Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony--> one of my favorite books is The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton. Hop, skip and jump. 

** My maternal grandfather came to America with his Irish parents and became a doctor...in his first year of practice, he delivered a baby boy to a poor Russian-Jewish immigrant family--> that child became Kirk Douglas--> which might connect me to-->Kevin Bacon in one way or another! 

The DNA/genealogy research has been so interesting for our family, and is ongoing as more information comes in. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend DNA testing or family trees or both! We used 23andMe, and Ancestry.com is another resource. They have amassed ginormous databases that can reveal all sorts of fascinating things about you and yours!

Have you done DNA analysis or genealogy trees for you and your family? Can you connect -- by six degrees or so — to some historical person (or to Kevin Bacon)?  I'd love to know how you would trace those degrees of separation!

The Art of Dancing

Anne here, pondering (musing? rambling on?) about the art of dancing. Is it a dying art?

In the olden days, pretty much everyone, peasant or noble, danced. They were often different dances, but it was regarded as an essential part of life. The nobles' dances were more stately, the peasants more of a romp, but still, whenever the opportunity arose, everyone danced.

Those Regency dances we catch glimpses of in TV shows and movies seem pretty slow and tame, but they're deceptive. My friend Keri, who is very fit — she walks 15 kms (nearly 10 miles) most days, and also attends a gym regularly, recently attended a conference where they did some Regency dancing. She loved it — and said she was exhausted at the end. "Those dances go on forever," she said. "Those Regency girls must have been pretty fit."

The Best Medicine

Joseph Caraud, "Am Morgen", 1865 (via Wikimedia Commons)

As a lifelong asthmatic allergic to just about everything in my environment except for goldfish and rocks, I spent a lot of my childhood days sick and in bed.

My family did what they could to make me feel less alone. My sister loaned me toys. My dad carried our one TV (black-and-white, naturally) upstairs to my room so I could watch Sesame Street in the morning. My mother would serve me my meals on a tray, like they did when I went to the hospital. She made the best lunches—soup, Saltine crackers, small slices of cheese, and an apple sliced thin and arranged in a curve. I still copy those lunches whenever I’m feeling unwell and need comfort.

But best of all were the nights when my dad, coming home from work, brought me a book.

London Theater

Covent Garden Theatre 1815

Pat here:

Even writing a 10,000-word short story seems to require extensive research—or maybe I just prefer digging through old books to actually setting rear in chair and writing. Anyway, I’ve been burying myself in early 19^th century English theater lore (I obsess over whether to use theatre or theater and decided I'm American, so unless it's an official title, I'm going with theater), finding facts I’ll never use except here.

Did you realize that Covent Garden and Drury Lane were the only theaters in London with a royal patent to perform Shakespeare in the early 1800s? And they basically only ran during the winter months? Haymarket was licensed for the summer but none of the smaller venues were allowed to perform the great bard. Without Shakespeare, it was almost impossible for a smaller theater to survive.

Reading for the First Time, Again

by Mary Jo

"What books do you wish you could read for the first time again?"

I can't remember where I saw someone ask the question above, but I immediately thought how delightful the question would be for a monthly Ask A Wench topic. And indeed, the Word Wench answers are varied and fun. I did suggest that we didn't need to mention books by Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer, which are pretty much a given in this crowd, but they did manage to sneak in. <G>

Pat Rice

I’m not entirely certain I can fully recreate the wonder of reading some books for the first time when the difference in experience is so enormous between then and now. I read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was nine years old. I still savor the joy in finding Real Books instead of the insipid garbage in the school library. Today—aging Britlit, even reading for the first time, would hardly be as engrossing.

What about Catch 22 or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I was in awe of those as a freshman in college. They’re so brilliant, I might still experience some of the awe, and my cynicism now and then would still enjoy it. But after seeing the movies? Maybe not so much.

And I know many tomes don’t hold up to my more jaded eyes these days. I soaked up Woodiwiss’s Flame and the Flower as if I were a thirsty sponge back in the 70’s, but now? Please. Neither the story or writing would meet my standards today. I think experience impedes my enjoyment of most books these days. I’ll spend a few quiet hours of pleasure, but they’ll never reach the awestruck standards of those earlier books.

 

Guest Tracy Grant on Tweaking History . . .

Andrea/Cara here, happy to welcome back Tracy Grant to the Wenches! For those of you who aren't familiar with her Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch historical mystery series, you are in for a great treat . . . and for fans like me, it's always wonderful news when a new book in the series is out, especially as Tracy, who is a meticulous researcher, always has such an interesting back story behind her plots. Gilded Deceit, the latest one, features appearances by (fluttery sigh) Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley in Italy, where a murder draws them into a tangled web of . . . But wait! I'm now going to hand the pen to Tracy and let her tell you herself!

I have toyed for years with the possibility of including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley as characters in one of the novels in my Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch historical mystery series. Byron’s ex-lover Lady Lamb has played an important role in two of the books. I wanted Byron to appear in The Berkeley Square Affair (I thought the lost version of Hamlet at the center of the plot would appeal to him), but the book needed to take place in late 1817 and he had left England by then in a cloud of scandal around the break up of his marriage to Annabella Milbanke and accusations that he had had an affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and fathered one of her children. So he was relegated to a few mentions in The Berkeley Square Affair, with Lady Caroline intrigued by the manuscript in the hopes that it will intrigue Byron. 

But my 2016 release, London Gambit ended with the "series game-changer" of Malcolm and Mélanie Suzanne and their family fleeing Britain because of Mélanie's past as a French spy. It was a plot twist I'd had in mind for a long time in the series, but even as I wrote London Gambit, I dithered. I felt guilty about putting my characters through so much. I wondered if I was writing myself into a corner. At the same time I was really excited about the possibilities their leaving Britain opened up for the series. New conflicts, internal and external, a new setting - and new characters. 

When London Gambit ends, the Rannochs are planning to take refuge at Malcolm's villa on Lake Como. My new book Gilded Deceit finds them (after a stop in Switzerland to see Suzanne's friend Hortense Bonaparte and solve an unexpected mystery for her in  the novella Mission for a Queen) arriving at Lake Como in August of 1818. When I sat down to research and plot Gilded Deceit, I realized that Percy and Mary Shelley also traveled to Italy in 1818, and that Byron was already there. In a  book which thematically in many ways is about exiles and ex-patriates, the Shelleys and Byron seemed the perfect real historical figures for my fictional characters to encounter. I spent a lot of time trying to plot Gilded Deceit around the Shelleys' and Byron's actually chronology. But the over all chronology of the series and some developments with secondary characters locked me into a certain timeline. So in the end, I confess, I took shocking liberties with Byrons’ and the Shelleys' chronology in Italy in the summer of 1818. 

This literary trio had already spent a now-famous summer together on the Continent in 1816 when Percy was still married to his first wife Harriet. He and Mary (then eighteen) and run off to the Continent, accompanied by her stepsister Claire Clairmont. They stayed with Byron at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Byron proposed that everyone at the house party write a ghost story, and Mary came up with an idea for a short story that ultimately became the novel Frankenstein. Her sister Claire, meanwhile, was more interested in captivated a poet of her own. She and Byron had begun an affair before he fled to the Continent. By the time they all met up in Switzerland Claire was pregnant with his child. They briefly resumed to their affair that summer, but in the end Claire returned to Britain with Percy and Mary and gave birth to baby Allegra, her daughter by Byron.

Claire doted on the baby, but she was penniless and could not support herself if she was known to be the mother of an illegitimate child. Despite being known for their bohemian ways, Percy and Mary (by the time married after the suicide of Harriet Shelley) were at some pains to conceal Allegra’s parentage. In the spring of 1818, Claire, Percy, and Mary traveled to Italy with Allegra, and William and Clara, Mary and Percy’s two young children. The plan was to take Allegra to Byron, who had agreed to raise her, though he wanted nothing to do with Claire. Claire was very conflicted about this, but she was single and penniless. Maintaining a fiction about Allegra's birth was getting challenging. 
Percy and Mary visited Lake Como soon after their arrival with the idea of taking a villa there for the summer and inviting Byron to join them. But Byron preferred to remain in Venice, and in the end the Shelleys, their children, and Claire spent time in Milan, from whence Claire tearfully sent baby Allegra to Venice to live with Byron. The Shelleys and Claire then traveled south, stopped for a month in Livorno, and spent the summer in the spa town of Bagni di Luca, in the Apennine Mountains. 

On 17 August, Percy and Claire left for Venice to try to see Allegra. They found Byron in an agreeable mood. He offered the Shelley party the use of his villa at Este for the summer. Claire could spend time with Allegra there which was ideal. The only problem was that Percy had told Byron Mary was with them, so that Byron, who could be surprisingly puritanical, wouldn't be shocked at Percy and Claire traveling alone. Percy wrote to Mary that she needed to join them at Este at once with the children. Their baby daughter, Clara, already ill, worsened on the journey. Mary and Percy took her to a doctor in Venice, but by the time Percy brought the doctor to the inn where Mary was with the baby, Clara was dying.

In Gilded Deceit, I have the Shelleys and Byron in Milan over at least part of the summer, so they can meet some other characters in the book with whom their connection later becomes significiant. I have also moved Clara's death back about a month from the end of September to the end of August. And rather than Percy and Mary spending time in Este and Venice after Clara's death, I have the Shelleys go to Lake Como, accompanied by Lord Byron.

I agonized, as I always do, when changing historical facts. But all three characters add an immeasurable amount to Gilded Deceit. Both the novel and the Rannochs benefit from their presence. Not only does their exile from Britain resonate with that of the fictional characters, the Shelleys complicated marriage both echoes and contrasts with the the Rannochs’ marriage and those of other couples in a series where marriage in an ongoing theme. And both Claire’s and Mary’s situations echo issues Mélanie Suzanne and many of the other female characters face trying to carve out lives for themselves beyond the confines of what is expected of a wife and the consequences of defying society’s expectations.
 
So, how do all you readers feel about authors changing historical chronologies? Writers, how do you approach such situations yourselves? Tracy will be giving away a e-book copy of Gilded Deceit to one lucky person chosen at random from all who leave a comment here between now and Thursday evening.

(For further reading about Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, I recommend Miranda Seymour's Mary Shelley (New York: Grove Press, 2002); Florence A. Thomas Marshall's The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Volume I (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1889); Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010); and Benita Eisler's Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Author photo credit: Raphael Coffey

How Connected are You?

Nicola here and today I’m talking about social media. Later this week I’m heading to the Romantic Novelists’ Association Conference in Telford, Shropshire, where one of the talks I’m doing is a joint workshop with Sarah Morgan called “Let’s Get Social.” There’s a certain irony in my talking about authors and social media, or even social media in general. I have a love/hate relationship with it to say the least. But perhaps that can be useful because whilst Sarah is a social media guru extraordinaire, I’m more the person who grumbles because I know that these days it’s an integral part of being a writer but I’m not always good at using it or very committed. So hopefully we will be representing different aspects and attitudes of the authors who will be present. And one thing that I do agree wholeheartedly with Sarah on is that it’s all about engagement. I love chatting about books, writing and history amongst other things so if I want to do that I need to make contact with like-minded people and beat my technology phobia!

Bread and Beer

They call bread the staff of life, using staff in the sense of “a long stick used as a support when walking or climbing or as a weapon”, which is to say, the first metaphorical meaning, since even the most warlike among us seldom take up baguettes and plunge into battle. What we mean when we talk about bread this way is that it supports us and keeps us alive.

This was true all through the historical period in which I interest myself – the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Bread provided most of the calories of the average person’s diet. Maybe 60%. (This was in the days when most folks were trying to scrape together enough calories to keep themselves alive, not trying to avoid them.) Beer – bread’s funtime cousin – contributed another 20% of calories. That’s 80 % of what folks lived on. Bread and beer were fueling the European working man.

click on this for a closer look at costs and calories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They didn’t necessarily know they were getting their protein from bread, because getting protein in the diet does not seem to have been a high priority, as per this handy table above which may be taken as more or less representative.

From this you will see that your average bloke in 1750 Strasbourg (this was a table easy to find if not totally relevant to 1800 London, but I’m talking Big Picture here) was spending 20% of his income on beer and getting only a teensy bit of his yearly protein. Put another way, the fellow was spending as much on beer as on soap, linen, candles, lamp oil, and fuel combined. He doubtless found this worthwhile.

Bread was almost sacred. The custom I’ve seen of making a cross on a loaf of bread before slicing it would have been widespread a century or two back. In church, bread was the body of Christ and a sacrament. You didn’t mess around with bread.

Beer didn’t have quite that cachet, but it was still pretty cool.

click on this for a closer look at what protein cost

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bread was cheap protein too. Lookit this nifty comparison of the cost of protein in silver value. Bread and beans were king. Half the price of meat when it came to providing protein.

Cheese and eggs, on the other hand, were expense, their protein roughly twice the price of bread protein. I admit I’m surprised to see the relative expense of egg. We think of eggs as cheap protein nowadays. When  a farm wife is in charge of eggs and cheese for market, she was running a profitable little business of her own.

 

typical bread chez jo

 

 But there it is, laid out in very general terms. Up to modern times European folks were bread and bean eaters. Now the choice of grains had widened and most people eat more of what used to luxuries. Bread is no longer the center of people’s diets. (Though I remember my father always wanted to have bread on the table, even if it was cornbread, often as not.)

 

What about your household? Bread on the table? Bread central to the diet, or a mere decorative edge?

All Dressed Up

Confession time: I’ve always wanted a Regency gown.

Even while falling for Colin Firth’s Darcy, I couldn’t help coveting all of Elizabeth’s outfits. The fabrics! The spencers! I swooned over those just as much as I swooned over wet-shirted Darcy. But given that my books aren’t set in the Regency, I never could find a good excuse why I should have my own gown.

Until last fall, while registering for this year’s Historical Novel Society North American conference, I noticed this announcement in the schedule:

"After the Saturday banquet, the party continues with a Regency Masquerade Ball…"

Canada, O Canada!

by Mary Jo

Happy birthday, Canada! Canada Day was actually Saturday, July 1st, but this is one of those big birthdays that end in a zero: Canada is 150 years young!

I grew up in Western New York, quite close to the Canadian border. As a kid, I remember driving over the Rainbow Bridge from Niagara Falls, NY to Niagara Falls, Ontario with a lovely view of the famous falls from the car. (That's the Rainbow Bridge below, lit up at night.)  Of course, lots of Americans grew up close to the Canadian border since it runs 3,000 miles across North America from sea to shining sea.

Once upon a time, Canada and the US were both part of British North America when all the colonies were pretty much separate. (Thirteen of them are now the US.) The French colony of Quebec was a different matter, but in 1763 France ceded it to Britain as a result of the Seven Years War.

America's Independence Day is tomorrow, July 4th, and most of us learned early the story of how the 13 colonies got stroppy with Britain and fought the Revolutionary War, after which those colonies became the United States of America (though really, they could have called it the United Colonies of America. UCA??)

Canada, however, continued as a number of separate colonies for some time, including Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Looking at this map (from Wikipedia), you'd think Upper Canada would be the green bit because, well, it's upper. But no, in this case upper and lower refer to the mighty St. Lawrence River and "upper" is nearer the headwaters and covered an area this is now the southern part of the Province of Ontario. "Lower Canada" is farther along the river and is the now the southeastern part of the Province of Quebec.

In 1841, Upper and Lower Canada were united into the Province of Canada, which lasted until 1867, when the Dominion of Canada was formed of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. And the 150th anniversary of this act of union is what is now being celebrated.  (Picture below is one I took in a park in St. John, New Brunswick.  Beavers are the national animal of Canada.)

Canada was the first Dominion within the British empire and the name indicated that it was a self-governing entity within the empire. As a side note, a while back I listened to an audiobook course on the history of the British empire, and one of the things that stuck with me was that the British statesmen decided after the American Revolution that Britain had handled the 13 colonies badly, and they needed to do better.

And they did, which is why nations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others were comfortable staying within the big tent of the British Commonwealth.

There were good reasons for Canada uniting, not least of which was a wariness about all those people south of their border. (Canada is the second largest country in the world after Russia, but much of it is so very cold that the population is only about a tenth that of the US.)

One of the hoped-for goals of some Americans in the War of 1812 was to annex Canada, which after all is much closer to the US than Britain is. Very efficient, yes? Well, Canadians were NOT on board with this, and not only because tens of thousands of America loyalists had emigrated to Canada after the American Revolution and they hadn't changed their minds about being part of the United States. (The War of 1812 ended as basically a draw without a significant exchange of territory in either direction.)

There's lots of going back and forth between the US and Canada--we Word Wenches have had two Canadian Wenches, Jo Beverley and now Susanna Kearsley, and our site manager is Melissa Beverley, who lives in Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

While Canada and the US are generally pretty good friends, there is a certain amount of caution on the Canadian side. It's rather like a mouse and an elephant sharing a bed. They may be friendly, but when the elephant turns over, the mouse had better be alert! (I'm reminded of the story of a Mexican president who once said, "Pity poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States." <G> I'm sure Canadians sometimes feel the same.)

"The Murdoch Mysteries" is a favorite tv series for me and the Mayhem Consultant. Made in Canada, it's set in Toronto around 1900 and features a scientifically inclined detective called William Murdoch. The series is great--and now and then the characters show that wariness when arrogant American authorities shows up. <G> (I believe the series is the most popular in Canada.  Yes, Yannick Bisson who plays Murdoch is Very Handsome.  <G>  Yes, there's a very nice romance in the series. )

Canada has grown and flourished in the last 150 years. Like the US, the country has expanded westward and is now comprised of 10 provinces and 3 territories. (The 10th province, Labrador and Newfoundland didn't become part of Canada until 1949.)

Canada's global image owes much to its long history of peacekeeping missions. The world LIKES Canadians--American backpackers in Europe have been known to attach Canadian flags to their backpacks in order to be received in a friendlier fashion.

And now Canada is throwing itself a grand birthday party! Fireworks, parades, speeches--and one giant yellow rubber duck. <G> Six stories high, it was created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, who thought of it as a symbol of global unity (and humor). It's hard to look at that duck without smiling. (This image is from the CBC news site and my Toronto friend Ali Cunliffe referred me to it.)

The duck will spend three days in Toronto, then tour other ports in Ontario, bringing smiles wherever it goes, I'm sure.

So happy birthday, Canada, and long may you be smiling. I hope the US will always be as good a neighbor to you as you are to us.

Mary Jo