Word Wenches

The Christmas Ball: Excert Two: My True Love Hath My Heart

  Joanna here --

As you remember from Anne's posting last week, all the Wenches will be posting an excerpt from our stories from the anthology the Last Chance Christmas Ball, one each Sunday in the lead-up to Christmas.

Here's Anne's excerpt from the story Mistletoe Kisses. 

I'll just repeat what she said last week:

"We wenches had written a Christmas anthology before with a linking theme, but for this one we decided all the stories would be linked to an event, based around an annual Christmas ball, held by Lady Holbourne known as Lady Holly to her friends."

Here's the blurb for the collection:  Christmas 1815. Upstairs and downstairs, Holbourne Abbey is abuzz with preparations for a grand ball to celebrate the year’s most festive—and romantic—holiday. For at the top of each guest’s wish list is a last chance to find true love before the New Year…

My story is titled My True Love Hath My Heart. In it, we meet a legendary jewel, a heroine seeking revenge, a handsome scoundrel, housemaids gossiping, a bit about jewelry design, young love, and somewhat older love which is more complicated, this being the second time round.
And . . . well . . . Christmas.

The title of my short story comes from the eponymous Sir Phllip Sidney poem. (I have been waiting to use the word eponymous for a long time.)

My true-love hath my heart and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given:

 

So. My excerpt opens in Holbourne Abbey in the insufferable Mr. Gower's bedroom. Our heroine Claire, dressed in a maid's uniform, is rifling through Mr. Gower's jewel boxes.

. . .

“I always wondered what housemaids did in their leisure time.” The voice came from the doorway. “Theft, apparently.”

There was an instant like lightning, filled with a flash of recognition in the midst of blank surprise. She recognized him at once. How could she not? Nobody else spoke like silk over steel. Like honey and granite rock. Shouting in panic, sarcastic over the card table, whispered across a pillow, that was not a voice one could forget. She turned slowly to face him.

Nick Lafford stood in the doorway, a man not taking his dismissal seriously. She was furious with him. She was impatient and unforgiving. And everything inside her—heart, mind, and spirit was glad to see him.

He strolled into the room. Time flowed sluggishly around him, giving her a long opportunity to feel five or six emotions in a row, all of them complicated and contradictory.

“Picture of a maid dusting the jewelry,” he said. “How thorough of you.”

“Searching it, actually.”

“We rise above the banal, then. I always enjoy rising about the banal with you.” He came to look past her into the box on the wardrobe shelf. “We have the very likeness of plunder. I feel quite piratical. Is the loot immensely valuable?”

“Not so far.” She closed the leather case with the rubies and put it firmly back in the tray. “If they were vegetables, this would be a pile of potatoes.”

“Not counting the Coeur de Flamme.” Nick wore one of his deceptively open expressions. 

“Not counting the Coeur, which I haven’t found yet. What in the name of sanity are you doing here?”

“I appear to have joined you in ransacking with intent. Embarrassing if I’m caught at it.” He leaned to look into the jewel box and they touched, just a little. A brush of his jacket on her shoulder. A feeling of warmth at her side. Nothing really.

He said, “I’ll bet these dainty little leather boxes contain the good stuff.”

“Almost certainly. Go away, Nick.”

“I don’t think so. You may, eventually, be glad I’m here.” He stirred a finger into the jewels, inquisitive. “Or, of course, you may not. But I’m here anyway.”

This was so typical of him. Ready to filch jewels at her side or lead her onto the dance floor in Vienna in front of the assembled nobility of Europe. Once, he’d helped her relocate an inconvenient body. Once he—

Blast him for being Nicholas. For being sneaky and single-minded and never giving up. For being clever enough to move her like a chess piece to this time and this place. For saying he loved her.

Blast her for being happy to see him again, even for a minute.

She squashed down the anticipation and gladness that was springing up inside her like so many bubbles rising to the top of beer. She concentrated on being stern. He’d taken her by surprise. That was all. Nothing had changed.

He hooked up entangled necklaces and bracelets and let them dangle. “What a hoard for a man to lug about the north country. They almost beg to be stolen, don’t they?”

“No.”

“I hear their siren call. ‘Pick me up and carry me away,’ they say. Surely he won’t miss a few.”

“I’m busy, Nick. I don’t have time for this.”

“And we’re not thieves, like the regrettable Mr. Gower,” When she didn’t comment he said, “The money doesn’t matter, does it? He didn't just cheat you out of money. He stole your work. He tried to steal your good name.”

Nick understood. That was what made him so insidious. He’d always understood her.

She batted his hand out of the way and picked up the next leather case. “You contrived this. Both of us in the same house. It’s not some cosmic mischance.”

“Humbly, I admit it. I arranged for a guest list to the House party to land in the papers. You saw it. You’re here.”

“I should have been suspicious.”

“I’m glad you weren’t. I’m also glad you’re here,” he gestured a circle, taking in the rest of the room, Holbourne Abbey, and Northumberland, “with me, instead of breaking into Gower’s townhouse. He keeps guards. With guns.”

“Guns in his garden and the unbreakable safe he brags about. I hope someone robs it one fine evening, but it won’t be me. Damn you for interfering.”

“I can’t help myself, you know. Indulged from childhood. No self-discipline.”

He hadn’t changed a whit in the months since she’d sent him away. Still the perfect English aristocrat, casually confident, wrapped in the armor of first-class tailoring. Still the long, intelligent, handsome face that didn't show a tenth of what he was thinking. Brown hair in fashionable disorder. Brown eyes, carefully controlled in what they revealed.

He reached past her and selected a leather jewel case, flicked it open, and found emeralds. “This is nice.”

Very nice. Trust Nick to see that. “It’s famous—both the bracelet and the central stone. Spanish work, from stones plundered out of the New World. It’s been owned by most of the royal families of Europe at one time or another.”

“It must cringe at the company it keeps. May I confiscate it for you in my capacity as representative of the British government?”

“You may put it away.”

“You’re almost impossible to give jewelry to, my sweet.”

“Well, you can’t steal it for me.”

“I can’t buy it for you either, alas. I’ve tried.” He set the emeralds aside. His next leather case held a necklace of citrine and gold.

Her choice held a diamond broach, the stones cut at least a generation ago. She said, “This came to the daughter from her mother's family. The girl's name escapes me--“

“Mary.”

“That’s right. I expected to find it yesterday when I searched her room. He must hand her trinkets out to her, one by one, and take them back at night.”

“One of several petty punishments. They disagree over her choice of marriage partner.”

The English nobility were particular about who they let marry into the family. Wasn’t that the root of her own unhappy problem? “Who would be the daughter of a Gower? I’d rather scrub and dust for a living.”

She opened the next case. Opals. Then the next . . . and held her breath.

Nick whispered, “Well, well, well.”

Here was the Coeur de Flamme, the Heart of Fire.

Christmas snippets

Anne here, starting something a little bit different. We're putting up Sunday posts containing an excerpt from our stories in the Last Chance Christmas Ball — one each Sunday in the lead-up to Christmas.

The anthology was such a fun—and sometimes tricky— thing to do. We wenches had written a Christmas anthology before with a linking theme, but for this one we decided all the stories would be linked to an event, based around an annual Christmas ball, held by Lady Holbourne known as Lady Holly to her friends.

The emails flew back and forth as we tossed around ideas, made plans and thrashed out the details of the setting. Some of us wrote interweaving stories, some of us made our stories linked, but separate, several of us had our people not actually make it to the ball. But we all had such fun doing it, we wanted to share it again.

Here's the blurb for the collection:  Christmas 1815. Upstairs and downstairs, Holbourne Abbey is abuzz with preparations for a grand ball to celebrate the year’s most festive—and romantic—holiday. For at the top of each guest’s wish list is a last chance to find true love before the New Year…

My story is called Mistletoe Kisses, and it's about Allie Fenton, a young woman who, for various reasons, has never been able to attend a ball. Now orphaned and on the shelf, she's planning to become a teacher at a girl's seminary in Bath. But first there's her last Christmas at home and then, Lady Holly's famous annual Christmas ball. 

Here's a short excerpt:

"You'll come to my Christmas ball, then," Lady Holly told her. "Don't bother trying to think up any excuses — you're coming and that's that. Your year of mourning will be up, and you have no reason to stay here moldering away when I've gathered an excellent range of eligible gentlemen for your perusal."

Allie laughed. "For my perusal? As if I'm going shopping?"

"That's exactly what you'll be doing."

"Don't the gentlemen have any say in it?"

The old lady sniffed. "Women have been making men believe they have a choice for generations. Now don't be frivolous, Allie — I am determined to give you one last chance to find a husband before you go off and bury yourself in this, this school of yours." She pronounced 'school' as if she really meant 'zoo.'

Allie smiled. For all her caustic tone, Lady Holly had a very kind heart. "I would love to attend your ball, Lady Holly. . . "

The old lady frowned. "I hear a 'but' coming."

A Road Trip to the Far North

Nicola here. I’ve always loved a road trip, whether real or fictional. In my time I’ve been lucky enough to circumnavigate Iceland, drive across a fair bit of Southern Africa and enjoy a fabulous journey on the iconic Route 66. Last month, though, we took to the road closer to home and travelled the North Coast 500. This amazing route around the Highlands of Scotland is becoming one of the most popular driving routes in the world and I can totally see why. It has stunning views and even more amazing history to take in on the way and I thought I would share a little of that here today.

What We're Reading—October

Anne here, hosting this month's What We're Reading post. As always there's a lovely range of books for all tastes. And just a reminder -- these are not promo posts; they're genuinely what we've read and enjoyed in the last month. 

We'll start with Pat, who says: I'm on a hunt for light-hearted, humorous, feel-good books these days, so I'm over the moon when I find one.

180 SECONDS by Jessica Park qualifies, even though I suspect it's probably called a New Adult romance since the protagonists are in college. But this isn’t about the normal trials and tribulations of overworked, under-loved students. The protagonist Allison has been in foster care all her life, until she was adopted by a gay dad when she was sixteen. She’s closed off, shut down, prepared to peel out of the life of anyone who gets close. She does her best to avoid people entirely. She wants to love her adopted dad, who is a real gem, but she can’t even open his care packages. And then in one freakish moment when she’s forced herself to go into town, she’s caught up in an internet video where she has to stare at a boy for 180 seconds. That scene alone is worth reading the book. Esben, the hero of this story, is almost too good to be true, but he has his major hidden flaws as well. The romance is a rollicking ride of self-discovery and interconnectedness of the internet and how it drives the lives of these kids. So, it’s almost fantasy, but it’s fun fantasy. For a feel good read, try this one. 

Mary Jo read and recommends  David Rosenfelt's Andy Carpenter Series & Dogtripping

The Two Elizabeths of Ashdown House

Nicola here. Today it is my great pleasure to welcome to the blog Julia Gasper, a historian and author whom I met through a shared interest in Craven family history. Today Julia is talking about one of the Georgian Lady Cravens, Elizabeth Berkeley, whom she intriguingly describes as a "writer, feminist and European." Julia also draws some interesting parallels between Elizabeth Stuart, for whom Ashdown was built, and her namesake Elizabeth Berkeley.

"I greatly enjoyed reading Nicola Cornick’s novel, House of Shadows. However, one thing I found worrying was being told that, in this fictional world, Ashdown House had been burnt down in the early nineteenth century. This really bothered me. (And a lot of other people - Ed!) Every time it was referred to, I felt uneasy in case I might go over there and find that this exquisitely beautiful seventeenth-century mansion in Oxfordshire really had vanished!

I am happy to assure you all that Ashdown House, near Lambourn, is still there and owned by the National Trust. I visited it when I was writing my biography of Elizabeth Craven, the Georgian writer, who lived there in the 1760s, when she was a young bride. It was her first marital home, and she shared it with her husband, William, 6^th Baron Craven, heir to the considerable estates and wealth of the Craven family. His mother and his two sisters lived there with them.

Elizabeth Craven was born Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, younger daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and she was married in 1767 at the tender age of sixteen to Lord Craven. She had little choice in the matter. She had seven children before parting from her husband rather traumatically in 1782 and going to live in France, to escape the scandal and gossip that always in this period accompanied aristocratic divorces. She did not disappear into obscurity by any means, but travelled around the whole of Europe, to Italy, Austria, Poland, Russia, the Crimea, Turkey, Greece and Romania, writing about everything she saw and everyone she met, from galley slaves in Genoa to the Empress Catherine the Great. She was a passionate person whose life included many love-affairs, and she had to be strong to stand up to the social disapproval this often attracted.

Elizabeth Craven always loved reading and acting. She wrote plays, poems, novels and travelogues, as well as a remarkable early feminist work called Letters to Her Son, in which she condemned the laws that made a wife obey her husband and gave him so many unjust powers over her. She advised her son  - another William Craven  - to treat his wife with respect and sensitivity, as an equal companion, and never to remind her that he was, in the eyes of the law, her master. If he did that, they would both be very much happier. It is pleasant to record that he followed her advice, with total success.

House of Shadows tells the story of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I, and her secret love for an English cavalier. Elizabeth married Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate and became for a brief time Queen of Bohemia. But she and Frederick lost their throne after only one year and were driven out of their kingdom, and so she acquired the rather melancholy title of the Winter Queen. One of Frederick’s most loyal supporters was the gallant soldier William, 1^st Lord Craven, who put his sword and his fortune at the service of the exiled monarchs. William fell in love with the Winter Queen and she returned his passion, but their difference in rank was a serious barrier. It is said that they married in secret, after many years of concealment and yearning.

Did any lady in the annals of courtly love ever set her faithful admirer a more gruesome task than that of retrieving a lost treasure from the coffin of her dead husband? That is what Elizabeth of Bohemia demanded from William, Lord Craven, and of course he did not refuse. He was hers to command, and the scene of the novel in which he performs the deed is dark and splendidly macabre.

Ashdown House was one of William’s gifts to his princess, who had lost her own home, and loved hunting. It was built in the 1660s and the first thing that strikes you when you approach is its extreme elegance and air of romantic aloofness, surrounded as it is by miles of green parkland and farmland. This was once a mediaeval deer park and it is close to the Berkshire Downs. When it was built it was actually in Berkshire, but by dint of a boundary change Oxfordshire managed to acquire it.

Ashdown was not the only house that Lord Craven built to receive his royal beloved. He also built her a far larger house, a veritable palace, at Hampstead Marshall, another one of his Berkshire estates, but that has not survived. In the century between the first Lord Craven and the sixth, Ashdown House was used as a minor residence, a convenient hunting-estate, not too far from London, where deer, pheasants, hares and other wild game could be shot and either eaten on the spot or taken up to London for a dinner-party at the Cravens’ house in Mayfair.

In her Memoirs, Elizabeth Craven says that she was very interested in the history of the Craven family. She looked at documents in the family archives, and she was sure the Queen of Bohemia had married the first Lord Craven. When I was writing my biography of her, I had a strong feeling that she was fascinated by this earlier Elizabeth, her namesake who also married a William Craven. 

There are many other things they had in common. They were related, because Elizabeth Craven was actually descended, via the Berkeley and Richmond lines, from King Charles I of England, brother of the Queen of Bohemia. So Elizabeth of Bohemia was her great-great-great-great-aunt. Both women married at sixteen, both had large families of children. Both were women of considerable intelligence and strength of character, a strength they needed as both suffered great upheavals and reversals in their life. The Winter Queen had to endure her husband’s defeats in he Thirty Years War and the loss of his hereditary domains in the Palatinate. Elizabeth Craven had to suffer cruel persecution from the prigs and the gossips when her husband decided to part from her, and most painful of all, she was forcibly separated from six of her seven children. All of her four daughters were kept in the care of their father, and forbidden to write to her, a wound that was as humiliating as it was distressing.

Both Elizabeths, curiously enough, married minor German princes. After many outrageous love-affairs, including one with William Beckford, the author and art collector, Elizabeth Craven found herself a second husband, the Margrave of Anspach, who made over his little principality to Prussia and retired to England. She married him in 1792 and until his death in 1806 they lived at Hammersmith near London. They made their home a hub for artists, musicians, actors, unconventional people and French emigrées fleeing from the Revolution. Elizabeth had a private theatre where the performances became celebrated. After the Margrave’s death she retired to Naples to spend her last years in quiet seclusion.

When we compare their portraits, it is not too fanciful to see some resemblance between these two Elizabeths, who were both admired for their brains as well as their beauty.

My intuition that Elizabeth Craven was fascinated by the Queen of Bohemia, whose destiny in so many ways resembled her own, was finally confirmed in a surprising way. After I had finished writing the biography, and published it, I discovered a lost novel by Elizabeth Craven, called The Witch and the Maid of Honour. It is set mainly at Coombe Abbey, one of the Craven properties, and the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, features in it as one of the characters. A tournament at court to celebrate her wedding to the Elector Frederick is one of the high points of the book. The Princess Elizabeth is shown at exactly the age Elizabeth Craven was when she arrived at Ashdown House in 1767, and learned about the history of the Craven family. I am now in the process of editing this book, which may be the very first historical novel ever written in the English language, to bring it out in a more accessible form so that it finally gets some of the attention it deserves.

The Winter Queen bequeathed to Lord Craven many wonderful portraits of the Stuart royal family, and many of them can be seen still at Ashdown House. To Elizabeth Craven the writer, these were her distant relatives too. 

Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European by Julia Gasper is published by Vernon Press 2017 - ISBN 9781622732753 is now out in paperback and E-book formats.

Some of Elizabeth Craven’s more unusual works are available here:

The Modern Philosopher, Letters to Her Son and Verses on the Siege of Gibraltar, by Elizabeth Craven, edited by Julia Gasper.

Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017.

You can find out more about Elizabeth Craven and the eighteenth-century world she lived in on Julia's blog ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

Thank you very much to Julia for a fascinating blog piece and for sharing her knowledge about the two Elizabeths with us today! 

Wenches and the Wild

 Joanna here, bringing you tales of Wenchly encounters with wild things.  We Wenches had been chatting by email about chickens and copperheads, as one does.

Mary Jo, first up, brings us her stories from further to the the Wild Side:

I love animals and grew up on a farm, but I have no tales of devil red hens, mega-roosters, or sinuous copperheads.  There have been plenty of cats and dogs in my life, and my woodsy suburban neighborhood has lots of squirrels and chipmunks and deer and foxes and bunnies.  (I hope those last two don't meet up often!) 

But for real drama, I'll have to turn to Botswana.  Two years ago, we did a safari there after I spoke at a conference in Johannesburg, and it was great.  We traveled several vast nature preserves in open sided safari trucks.  The wildlife there is not tame, but many of the animals have become accustomed to the trucks and pretty much ignore their human visitors as long as we behave.  So a leopard ambled by a few feet away and lionesses lounged in the dirt roads, supremely confident.  

But my most dramatic encounter was our last night in one of the three safari camps we stayed in.  This particular camp housed guests in glamorous tents.  (Hence, "glamping.")  The camps were completely dark when we returned to our quarters after dinner, and we were told to always have a guide escort us back.  On that last night, I was walking ahead of the Mayhem Consultant and our guide, only a single flashlight to guide our path through the African night. 

As I neared our tent, I heard something rustling in the underbrush.  It didn’t sound large  but it could have been a hyena or some other critter I didn't want to startle.  I returned to our guide and said there's something up there, it didn't sound like a big beast like an elephant, but he might want to check it out.  He did and came back and said calmly, "It's an elephant."

Sure enough, standing smack dab in front of the entrance to our tent, maybe four feet from the canvas, an elephant was chomping on some greenery.  I thought we'd retreat to the headquarters until the elephant moved on, but our guide just said that we could get in through the end entrance of the tent. Oooh-kay, if he thought it was safe… 

I unzipped the end door entry and we went inside.  (I peeked out the front entrance and saw the vast curved back of the elephant silhouetted against the stars, and felt the presence of that great bulk just a few feet away.)

For the next half hour or so we could hear the elephant brushing around the canvas sides as it continued to foraged.  I wasn't frightened but I was wary.  The Mayhem Consultant wanted his shower so he took it.  ("brush, brush, brush, a crunch of a branch, brush, brush, brush…)  I didn't want to be caught starkers if the elephant absented-mindedly took down part of our tent, but that didn't happen.  Eventually the elephant wandered off and all was calm.

But I didn't forget that encounter with a Wild Thing!

The Power of Numbers

Nicola here. A short and hopefully sweet blog from me today as I’m heading off on holiday to Scotland soon and am surrounded by dog and human packing and am trying to work out how much food we will all need for 2 weeks in remote locations!

Anyway, back to the blog, and a writing friend mentioned to me a week or so ago that she thought numbers in book titles were becoming a trend. Just as there had been “girl” titles, so there are now number titles, and a glance at the UK charts seems to support this: Joanna Cannon’s new book is called “Three Things about Elsie” and Jonas Johannsen has written “The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred Year Old Man” to name but two.

Ask A Wench - Deadline Fever!

Nicola here, introducing this month’s Ask A Wench question which is: "What comfort foods and other strange rituals do the Wenches turn to when under deadline?" This is a subject which elicited many sighs, groans and hollow laughter when it was raised amongst us. We've all been in deadline territory and we have the scars to prove it. How do we handle it? What rituals do we indulge in to tempt the Muse? How much extra chocolate does it take to see us through to the end of the book? These are all questions that we will be tackling. And because deadlines are pretty much universal in working and other aspects of life we know readers will have lots of tips and suggestions to share, so bring on the deadlines!

Back to School

Here in the UK it’s the first day of the new school year today. I can vividly remember the pleasure of the school summer holidays – six weeks off! – lasting from the end of July to the beginning of September, including my birthday and usually a holiday by the seaside. Summer was such a treat in that respect! Then the days would start to shorten and the nights would turn cooler and even if it felt as though it was still summer we knew that autumn and a return to school was on the way. The shops would all go on about “back to school” uniforms and stationery, and my grandfather in particular would tease me about going back to school knowing how much I wanted the holidays never to end. It wasn’t that I disliked school. I enjoyed it most of the time but there was something special about those summer holidays of childhood. Of course I never really thought about how fortunate I was to have an education until I started to study history and realised that girls in particular hadn’t always had those opportunities.

Twenty Years Ago

Nicola here, inviting everyone to join me in a small celebration! Twenty years ago this year my first book for Harlequin Mills & Boon was published. True Colours was named in homage to Georgette Heyer; the writing style probably owed a fair amount to her as well for she, along with Alice Chetwynd Ley, Clare Darcy and others had been strong influences on my developing love of the Regency romance.

Even now I can remember the sense of disbelief to see a book I had written actually in print. For years I had written in my spare time – 12 years to be exact. True Colours was begun when I was at college and was a long time in the writing and re-writing. Life went on around it – marriage, moving jobs, moving house… And then suddenly there it was in my hand and on the shelves. It was an extraordinary and almost unreal feeling. I also remember being a tad disappointed by the cover which looked rather vampirish to me (the US version that came later was much prettier!) I also remember spending my first royalty cheque on a new bicycle! Later that same year (August, in fact) my second Regency romance, The Virtuous Cyprian, was also published. I wrote two books a year in those days even though I was working full time in an office as well. Her I am in a bookshop looking very excited to be on the shelves with Penny Jordan and Sidney Sheldon! This is a photo of an old photo so apologies that it isn't that good!)

RNA: A Gathering of the Clans

by Mary Jo

I love writers' conferences, and I've been to my share of them. The sight of so many introverts blossoming into temporary extroversion is delightful. Creativity and connections and chocolate are all much in evidence.

I've met many of my best writer friends (and most of the Wenches) at writers' conferences. Which is why when Wench Nicola, currently president of the British professional romance writers' group, Romantic Novelists' Association, invited all interested Word Wenches to come to this year's annual RNA conference in Leeds, I jumped on it. (No, of course this had nothing to do with the chance to take a deductible trip to the UK! Why would you even think that? <G>)

 

Vale Janga

Anne here, writing on behalf of all the word wenches in a special Sunday post, a tribute to Janga Rholetter — one of our long time wenchly readers and a friend to many of us here, readers as well as writers. Janga passed away suddenly last week — we knew she was desperately ill, but the speed of her passing took us all by surprise. 

Janga loved words; she loved stories and poetry and romance and writing. She was an intelligent and insightful reviewer — I suspect many of us here became addicted to her reviews and have added to our TBR piles because of Janga. She was very active in the romance community; she was a wenchly reader from the very first — enter Janga into the search bar and you'll see so many comments over the years. She was also very active on the Eloisa James boards, she blogged and reviewed on The Romance Dish and also on her own blog.

I felt very privileged to know her. She wrote to me about my very first book, and that began a correspondence between us that lasted almost 20 years. We talked about books, about poetry, about writing, about teaching, and about life. She was a wonderful critic, perceptive and articulate and encouraging. She saw things in my work that I wasn't aware of. She made me feel a better writer than I am.

I am sad, though, that her own fiction never saw the light of day. She was, I suspect, her own toughest critic. She was a private person—there are no photos of her on her sites—and very modest. But though her fiction might not be out there, Janga left behind a rich legacy of her writing, in reviews, interviews, essays and blogs. 

Her good friend PJ Ausdenmore wrote a wonderful tribute to Janga on The Romance Dish. You will also get a lovely sense of the person Janga was by reading this blog that she wrote back in 2012, her gratitude list for Thanksgiving. 

I might be the one writing this post, but Janga was beloved of all the wenches. Goodbye, dear Janga, thank you for sharing your thoughts, your books and your wisdom, from Mary Jo Putney, Pat Rice, Susan King, Andrea Pickens, Nicola Cornick, Joanna Bourne, Susanna Kearsley and Anne Gracie. Rest in peace.

A Dip in the Pool of History

Nicola here! Last month we had a heatwave in England and now once again the hot weather is back, the grass has turned yellow and
there’s talk of banning the use of hosepipes. Our heat here (up to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit) is nothing though compared to the temperatures elsewhere in Europe and also across the world. It’s not something we’re equipped to deal with (no air con in most homes and other buildings) but at least as an island we have lots of lovely beaches and cool seas. I live as far away from the sea as it’s possible to do in England so I make do with the local swimming pool which is still very refreshing even though it’s a heated pool. Elsewhere in the country, the lidos - outdoor, unheated swimming pools - are becoming very popular again. It reminds me of the Spartan regime of my school swimming lessons which I always associate with the smell of wild garlic because they took place at an outdoor pool in the woods!

What We Read in July

Anne here, hosting this month's What We're Reading post, and what a line-up we have: science fiction, dual timeline, historical romance, women's fiction, non-fiction, and murder mysteries, with quite a few wenches turning to crime.

Mary Jo here.  I recently reread a book I'd read in the past, and I liked it even better the second time around.  John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars  is science fiction, but not the kind with ray guns and evil invading aliens. Instead, it's funny and very entertaining and even has some romance.

Scalzi speaks amusingly  about how he wrote the book in 1997 just to see if he could write a full length novel.  A couple of his writer friends said it was good, and his wife was greatly relieved to like it because if she hated it, she'd still have to live with him. <G>  Then he published it in pieces on his new scalzi.com blog and people sent in a buck if they liked it.  The story wasn't published as a real, print novel until 2005, but it has thrived since, and Scalzi is now a New York Times list bestselling science fiction author of many novels. 

 The narrator is Tom Stein, a young and successful Hollywood agent who has just gotten mega-bucks for his top client, a feather brained but likable young blond beach girl who desperately wants to win the role of a tough-as-nails Holocaust survivor.  His other clients tend to be neurotic and demanding, but that's normal.

Then Tom's life gets complicated.  Carl, the legendarily tough head of his agency, calls Tom in and says that he has been contacted by friendly aliens, the Yherajk, and they've decided they need a Hollywood agent to introduce them to humankind.  The problem is that they looks like blobs of melting gelatin and smell like locker room socks.  Since Tom's boss can't do the job personally, he enlists Tom, who has his work is cut out for him!  So a snarkily likable Yherajk with ADD and the human name of Joshua moves in with Tom, and the fun begins. 

This may sound somewhat boggling, but the story of Tom, Joshua, an old neighborhood dog called Ralph, actress Michelle, and Tom's sharp-tongued Chicana secretary Miranda is very entertaining, and ultimately moving.  I'll be reading it again. (Anne pops in to add her endorsement to this book)

Training A Service Dog

Hello! This is Angus MacLeod Cornick. Today I’m an honorary Word Wench as Nicola has turned her blog spot over to me to tell you about how I train service dogs for the UK Guide Dogs Association. It’s a demanding job but I like to feel I do my bit to help and my fee of one special dog treat per day is, I think, very reasonable. Earlier this year I qualified as an official Guide Dogs supporter dog, a role usually reserved for retired or failed guide dogs – Nicola was very proud of me! The exam was arduous - I had to remain calm and steady in all sorts of situations, from small children approaching me to other dogs barking at me. This was okay as my natural state is to sleep a large part of the time.

My life as a service dog mentor began a couple of years ago when my blissful experience of being a spoiled only dog came to an abrupt halt. I should have spotted the warning signs but I was young and naïve. I thought that when a “luxury indoor kennel” appeared full of cuddly toys my humans were trying to curry favour with me. Little did I realise it was for someone else.

Lyveden New Bield – Visiting “An Interrupted Dream”

Nicola here, with another of my summer historic house travelogues. I finished my latest manuscript a week ago and in traditional fashion celebrated by cleaning the house and doing some ironing. As regular readers of the Wench blog will know, this is the time we all catch up on the thousand and one things that get neglected whilst we are in our writing caves desperately trying to get to The End. Much as a city break in Europe or even a trip to the seaside might sound nice, it’s usually the mundane things that claim our attention, partly because we don’t have energy left for much else but also because we urgently need some clean clothes.  However, when my husband tempted me with a visit to one of my favourite historical sites, I felt a lot more enthused for that than for ironing! So it was that on a baking hot day we set off very early in the morning for Northamptonshire and the intriguing Lyveden New Bield.

Lyveden, like so many country houses, occupies an isolated position. It’s set the middle of the glorious Northamptonshire countryside and as you approach, you see what looks like a ruin standing alone in a field. It’s an extraordinary sight. The house was the dream of Sir Thomas Tresham, a Tudor knight who was a staunch Catholic. He was a wealthy landowner who moved in the highest social circles in the county but although he was ruthlessly efficient in managing his estates to produce profit, he was also very extravagant and pursued a lavish lifestyle. It was, however, the heavy fines levied on him for following the Catholic faith that were eventually to lead to his financial downfall.

A Georgette Heyer Soiree

Nicola here. Last week I spent a most enjoyable evening in London at a Georgette Heyer soiree. It was part of a two-day event organised jointly by London University and the London Book Fair; earlier in the day there had been a conference on Georgette Heyer and her writing which my writing friend and colleague Sophie Weston had attended. You can read her report on the conference here  and it’s both fun and thought-provoking, like Georgette Heyer herself.

The evening soiree was, appropriately enough, in an 18^th century townhouse, The House of St Barnabas, 1 Greek Street, Soho, London. It has been a homeless charity since 1862 and is now also a private members’ club dedicated to charity work. The first house on the site was built during The Restoration period, a grand mansion with coach house and stables. This original house was demolished for a new one to be built between 1744 and 1747. It is in glorious Georgian style with beautiful rococo plasterwork. When we visited it was also decorated with football memorabilia to celebrate the World Cup; a case of the old meeting the new! According to research, the rooms and gardens of the House of St Barnabas were the blueprint for the imagined lodgings of Dr. Manette and Lucy in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The alleyway on one side of the house was later re-named Manette Street.

We were met at the entrance to the reception rooms by a lady and gentleman in period costume who greeted us with appropriate formality, thereby making me realise that although I wrote and read Regency fiction a great deal, I was on uncertain ground when it came to putting the manners into practise!

The first part of the evening was a discussion around the theme of “Two hundred years of social mores: From dance cards to online dating.” I’d been invited to lead this debate with Alison Flood, a journalist and Georgette Heyer fan. As there had recently been some discussion in the press comparing the TV programme Love Island to a Jane Austen novel we decided to take this as our starting point and having checked how many of the fifty or so people present had watched Love Island (three) asked whether people felt there were any similarities between the two. Some lively discussion followed! We agreed that there were some superficial similarities, for example people have always tended to judge on first impressions whether on Tinder, Love Island or at the Pemberley Ball.  In a relatively closed society, whether it be artificially so (Love Island) or a Regency village, newcomers often spell trouble and gossip abounds.

A lot of people felt that they would have preferred a Regency-style courtship to modern-day dating. However an examination of this
idea showed various pros and cons. It feels as though both time and subtlety are often missing from today’s dating. Everything happens fast because life happens fast. But of course in the Regency period matches were often made on quite a short acquaintance without having the chance to get to know one another very well, particularly if there was family pressure. People were also appreciative of the fact that these days there is a great deal more opportunity to meet a potential partner than there was in the past – although it might not always feel like it. Everyone agreed though that the courtesy, respect and “rules” of 19^th century society could be helpful in comparison to what sometimes feels like chaos in the social interactions of today. And then there were the dress codes. Maybe we were old-fashioned (although there was a good age range in the audience) but we all agreed that Regency dress for both men and women was more attractive than tiny bikinis and endless six packs, even on Poldark! There was a sense of “put it away; public nudity is becoming boring.”

Other threads we discussed included the influence of Georgette Heyer’s own era on her writing, which is something Sophie also mentions in her blog, and the fact that we were in effect comparing our modern day reality with historical fiction, or in the case of Jane Austen’s writing, contemporary fiction. All in all it was a stimulating discussion that ran over time until we were all desperate for supper! We concluded by sharing our favourite Heyer books and why we liked them. There was an audible gasp in the room, and some disapproval, when I said that for many years my favourite Georgette Heyer book had been Beauvallet although these days I would probably choose Devil’s Cub or her short stories. We could all agree, though on the perennial appeal and talent of Georgette Heyer as an author and thought that perhaps one of the reasons we enjoy her books is that her characters do to some extent thwart convention whilst operating within that society.

After a delicious supper of modern canapes when we discussed everything from the popularity of Regency dancing to historical accuracy in books and costume dramas, we had some pianoforte music and tackled the fiendishly difficult Heyer quiz, which made me realise I needed to brush up on my knowledge of her books to have a hope of matching the experts. No doubt a Regency lady would have described the evening approvingly as “a crush” and for me and the other guests, I hope, it was wonderful fun to talk to so many Regency aficionados. I left to get the train home, rather wishing I had a carriage waiting!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topics we discussed at the Heyer soiree or on her books or any aspect of the discussion.  What is it about the social behaviours of Regency society that we find attractive? What are the similarities and differences, and the pros and cons of dating now and then? Which would you prefer? And which one element of Regency manners would you re-introduce or encourage in modern society if you could?

Ask A Wench — childhood reading

Anne here, introducing the topic for this month's AAW (Ask A Wench): In your childhood reading was there a place you fell in love with?

Pat:  England, hands down. I read tons of Brit lit in elementary school. They used to sell Austen and Bronte in the Scholastic Library book fairs, the only time my parents gave me money for books. So I went for the great big fat books, and they were all about the white cliffs of Dover and the misty fog over the Thames and the thatched cottages in the Cotswolds. I had no idea where any of those places were, but I wanted to see them all. 

And then there were all the books about the kings and queens in the library that I had to research to figure out their relationships, because they were obviously all related, right? So then I wanted to see all their grand castles, the Tower of London, the towns and. . . I suspect I expected to see horses and carriages as well, but the cottage gardens would have sufficed! 

Exploring The Real Wolfhall

Nicola here, talking about a recent visit to a place steeped in history. “At the edge of Wiltshire’s ancient Savernake forest lies a house steeped in Royal history.  Shrouded in mystery and lost to the mists of time, Wolfhall stands, a testimony to the rise and fall of the Seymour family, so crucial to the heart of the Tudor monarchy and the history of England itself…” So reads the enticing introduction on The Real Wolfhall website, drawing in all of us who have a fascination with Tudor history.

Long before Hilary Mantel made the name “Wolf Hall” famous all over again in her Booker prize winning novel, many readers like myself had lapped up stories of the Seymour family in the writing of authors such as Jean Plaidy and any number of books about the wives of Henry VIII. Wolfhall is an iconic name that has been in my imagination for as long as I’ve been reading historical fiction and romance. When I wrote The Phantom Tree, about Mary Seymour, the daughter of Thomas Seymour and Catherine Parr, it felt appropriate to set part of it at Wolfhall and draw on that rich history.

What We're Reading - May

Nicola here, introducing this month's feature on our Wenchly reading. After what felt like a long reading slump I’ve had an amazing month of good books. I was lucky enough to be a judge for the RNA Debut Novel award and really enjoyed the experience; there was a huge range of books in contention this year, ranging from an 18^th century historical set in Ireland that was based on a riveting true story – Heart of Stone by John Jackson - to a laugh out loud romantic comedy – Perfect Match by Zoe May – with a load of other great books as well. You can find the whole list here if you would like to see what else is on there and if you enjoy the 17^th century I can really recommend Traitor’s Knot by Cryssa Basos, a brilliantly-written, fast-paced and romantic historical adventure set during the English Civil War.

As if that wasn’t enough, I read Island in the East by Jenny Ashcroft which is one of the richest and most exotic romantic historicals I’ve read in a long time. It reminded me of MM Kaye in the vivid drawing of the characters, the complex emotional relationships, the beautiful writing and the way that the location was a vivid character in itself.  The story is set in a dual time frame, Singapore in the Second World War and a parallel story forty years earlier.  In 1897, identical twins Harriet and Mae Grafton are sent to Singapore by their wealthy benefactor and their sibling love and support is fractured by rivalry and betrayal. In 1941, Ivy Harcourt, already suffering from wartime trauma, is posted to Singapore where she uncovers secrets from her grandmother Mae's past and experiences a romantic love of her own. I particularly loved Ivy and her hero Kit and were rooting for them all the way through.

 In between I also found the opportunity to glom on more of Emily Larkin’s Regency historicals (thank you, Anne, for the original recommendation!) and found what I think is my favourite so far, My Lady Thief. I loved everything about this book; the admirably confident heroine who had been made all the stronger by her traumatic past, the uptight hero who was utterly gorgeous underneath his stuffy exterior, and the beautiful way in which their relationship developed.

Anne writes: I finished Sebastien de Castell's four book swashbuckling series, "The Greatcoats", and found it a most satisfying read. If you're interested, start with Traitor's Blade.

Next I read Elly Griffiths, Dark Angel.  It's book #10 in her Dr. Ruth Galloway series, and I recommend you start at the beginning, not because each mystery can't be read on its own, but because the development of various characters through the series is a big part of the pleasure in reading these books. Elly Griffiths' narrator, Ruth has a dry, ironic humor that gently infuses her observations. Well worth reading.

I also read an advanced copy of Lucy Parker's new book, Making Up, which I loved. Lucy Parker wowed the wenches with her debut, Act Like It, and the follow-up, Pretty Face, and I felt very smug that I scored an early read of her third book in her "London Celebrities" series. I'm interviewing Lucy Parker on Friday. Stay tuned.

Mary Jo here:

Amanda Quick is the historical pseudonym of Jayne Ann Krentz, and she's made an interesting progression over the years: The Quick books started with Regencies, moved to Victorians, and in her new Burning Cove series, the setting is the 1930s in a glitzy California seaside resort with links to Hollywood.  The first book of the series, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, came out last year and the second, The Other Lady Vanishes, is a new release. 

The book begins with heroine Adelaide escaping from a horrible private asylum where she has been illegally held captive.  Once free, she heads to Burning Cove and a quiet life working in a tea shop.  But the past reaches out to ensnare her, a hot guy named Jake is in town in theory to help his nerves (which are actually made of steel <G>) and the action is on.  I like the 1930s setting, which is both familiar and distant, and there are hints of a world building toward war, though the focus is on Adelaide and Jake.  A rousing good read.

I also noticed that the first books in two series by Sharon Shinn, one of my favorite fantasy authors, are now only $2.99 in e-editions. Shinn is a master of world building, and Archangel is set in a world where human-but-winged angels are overseers for the rest of the population.  Gabriel, who is slated to become the next Archangel, a post that is held for 20 years, needs to find his god-designated wife, but she has disappeared--and when he finds her, she is not keen on the program!  Don't be put off by the dark cover, it's a great read with a powerful romance.

The other series is the Elemental Blessings and the first book is Troubled Waters. Again, there is great world building and a fine romance.  Happy reading!

Andrea: 

This past month I’ve been delving into the far-too-mountainous TBR pile, trying to catch up with all the recommendations I’ve been meaning to read. I heard Louise Penny speak at the Malice Domestic mystery conference last month, so was determined to finally start her Chief Inspector Gamache contemporary mystery series, set in Quebec, Canada. Am I glad I did! The first book, Still Life, follows the traditional cozy trope of a murder—this one of a 70 yr old woman in a small, isolated town, who seemed to have no enemies. But as the Inspector begins delving into the lives of the inhabitants, the peaceful tranquility is not what it seems. Penny writes wonderfully complex and vulnerable characters, and has a sharp eye for the nuances of family dynamics and marital relations. Inspector Gamache is a very interesting protagonist, too, and I’n really looking forward to continuing the series.

I also finally  read Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonsson, a delightfully charming book about a widowed retired English officer—a seemingly ordinary, by-the-book pillar of the community who strikes up a friendship with the Pakistani widow of the local convenience store . . . and suddenly begins to question what’s really important in life. There are laugh aloud scenes as the “new” major deals with his ambitious status-conscious son and his long-time friends at the golf club who think he’s gone off the rails. It’s a sly, witty commentary on modern life, but also a sweetly poignat celebration of "second acts” in life.

From Pat:

I've been in a reading slump lately, so perversely, I decided to clean out my TBR stack. You know how a TBR stack goes--the ones you just don't feel like reading right now drift to the bottom. It's probably a totally unfair means of choosing a book and predictably, I haven't finished a book in weeks. Nothing made me happy except a few old comfort reads I'd bought because they were on sale.

But back before my slump, I read HEIRS OF GRACE by Tim Pratt. Okay, I bought this because I'm a sucker for the fantasy of inheriting a big old mysterious house. In this case, the protagonist is an impoverished art student from Chicago who oddly inherits a derelict hoarder’s mansion in the mountains of NC. She knows she’s an orphan and assumes the person who left her the house was a relative—and quite a relative he was. The story is basically fantasy with Rebekah Lull learning about her magical family and having adventures and learning the morality of being almost all-powerful. There’s a witty boyfriend for the romance plot. I really wanted more on the personal side, but the story was a fun fantasy ride, and I happily followed it to the conclusion. If inheriting old houses and magic is your thing, this one’s for you!

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

12 YEARS! REALLY!!!

Happy Anniversary to the Word Wenches!

by Mary Jo

This is the 12th anniversary of the Word Wenches!  I hope you joined Anne's celebration tea party on Monday.  (The cakes and tea cups were splendid!)

Today, we continue the celebrations with reminiscences and book giveaways. 12 years is a long time, and in the way publishing has changed, it's eons.

Back in 2006, blogs were the Hot New Thing. Authors wanted to be able to reach readers, interact with them, and sell books. But it seemed like so much work! Surely better to put together a group and take turns?

The idea was sparked when Susan King and I had lunch with Eileen Buckholtz, a web goddess and friend. We decided to ask a few friends if they'd like to join with us, and to my surprise, everyone we asked said yes, even the most extreme of introverts. Turns out we all wanted to chat, interact, and sell books.

Blogging seemed very mysterious at the beginning, but we eventually figured it out. (Regency writer Candice Hern was a great help since she was already an experienced blogger and has fabulous collections on her web site.) Our first post was on May 22nd, 2006, and we're still standing after all those years. <G>

Much has changed over the years as we've lost some Wenches, and acquired wonderful new ones who bring their own special stories and talents. As the writing world has changed, some of us have moved in different directions like mainstream historicals, mysteries, and paranormals.

In 2006, I was in my paranormal historical phase. I love fantasy, so I loved blending magic with real history and romance. In 2006, Stolen Magic, Book 2 of my Guardian Trilogy, was published, and I was working on Book 3, A Distant Magic. I wrote seven paranormal historicals all together, 4 adult and 3 young adult, but a year later I moved back into more traditional historical romance because in this business, things are always changing.

As one of the original Wenches, I figure I've written over 300 blogs. (!!!) But I like doing these short pieces about all sorts of topics, I love interacting with readers, and most of all, I love hanging out with my wonderfully talented, good-natured fellow Wenches. Good times, then and now!

 

 

Ask A Wench--Personal News

Today’s Ask A Wench post comes from Beverly Abney. She said:

You are all authors whose work I read, and I like the blog to keep me posted on how you are and what you are writing. It is so personal and I can feel that you are friends of mine. Personal news from authors is important to readers.

Pat:

I’m a firm believer that readers and authors ARE friends. Writers may pour out their souls on the page in private, but we’re exposing those souls to our readers. So how could we not trust each other and look for better understanding?

Not that a writer’s life is all that interesting, mind you! We curl up in our caves and wail and gnash our teeth for the better part of our days. In my case, I occasionally escape to play with flowers. I’m in utter awe of this orchid cactus that has multi-colored flowers!

Every so often we sneak out of our caves for research. I just did a quick run up the Pacific Coast to Santa Cruz to get a better “feel” for the area I’m writing about in my new Crystal Magic series. Occasionally we escape to go to conferences where we can talk to people who understand about wailing and gnashing. I’ll be attending the RNA conference in Leeds, UK this summer with a couple of other wenches. Lots of talking will be part of the program! Let us out from behind our desks, and we can’t stop jabbering.

And in personal news, our one and only grandchild is graduating early and heading off to college in the fall. So there’s lots of excitement and tears around the old homestead right now.

Peacocks!

Spring is advancing which means that in villages and stately homes across the length and breadth of the British Isles the mournful cry of the peacock will start to ring out, followed by various news stories about how bad-tempered and/or exhausted peacocks have been causing havoc. Last year there was Kevin, a mischievous peacock causing mayhem in a Derbyshire village, then we heard about Henry the peacock who was so tired of being the only male in a flock of peahens (exhausting work!) that he flew away for some rest.

The peacock is a familiar sight at many of our stately homes in the UK. This one was displaying for us at Corsham Court in Wiltshire when we visited. The peacock is a native bird to India and was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans. It has many sacred connotations. The name derives from the Old English and the earliest example of it referred to in writing comes from 1300: “Foure and xxti wild ges and a poucock.” In the 14^th century Chaucer first used the word to describe ostentatious people who strutted about and it still carries this meaning to this day. In art a peacock feather in a painting was used as a symbol of pride and vanity.

What We're Reading - April

As usual, the wenches have an eclectic and exciting selection of reading favorites from this past month. I think we've covered all the genres from wedding fantasies to biographies, with lots of romance in between!

 

Pat:

Aunt Dimity's Death, Nancy Atherton

This book is labeled a mystery, but it’s not a traditional one, which is probably why I adore it. There is no suspense other than determining the reason the mysterious Aunt Dimity was left alone and unhappy all her life. It’s more a fairy tale ghost story, since Aunt Dimity haunts the protagonists’ life in more ways than one, always in a cheerful, amiable manner. The heroine is the next best thing to the Poor Little Match Girl. She gets to visit what is, to all intents and purposes, an enchanted castle in a modern metropolis, meets a prince who isn’t really handsome but a lawyer, and is given a list of odd tasks she must accomplish to earn a princely sum. It’s all low key, pleasant, and charming, and we all get to live the fairy tale with her. In this day and age, I’m good with that.

 

The Tiffany Efffect

Nicola here! As readers and writers we all know the importance of a character’s name. The right name can fit perfectly with our view of that person; the wrong one can completely pull us out of a story. With historical fiction it’s even trickier because not only do names have to fit the character but they also need to be historically correct. Nothing breaks my enjoyment more than a Regency heroine called Tiffany.

And that is where I am wrong, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago when I heard about “The Tiffany Effect.” The Tiffany Effect is the belief that something is more modern than it actually is. So, for example, central heating could be an example of The Tiffany effect if you thought it was a modern invention and not a technology originally introduced by the Ancient Greeks and Romans . Or glasses, which were first worn in 1290.

I thought that the name Tiffany simply had to be a 20^th century introduction, popularised in 1961 by the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” which was based on the book by Truman Capote.  I vaguely knew that Tiffany had been a surname before that – Tiffany & Co. the jewellers was founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany.  So I thought I was clear on the timeline. But it turns out I was wrong because the name Tiffany was recorded in 1200 as a first name, traditionally given to girls born on 6^th January, the Feast of the Epiphany.  The spelling in Old French was “Tifinie” and it derives from a Greek word, Theophaneia, which originally mean “manifestation of god.”  By 1600, the name Tiffany appears in English. By this time it was also the name for a light, gauzy sort of material (like the one in the picture) as well as a first name and a surname.

Poldark Country

Nicola here, with a post that is part travelogue, part about settings and backgrounds in books. 

There’s something about Cornwall, isn’t there. It rivals Scotland in the imagination as a romantic setting for a novel. It's wild, rugged and magical. Perhaps it all started with Daphne Du Maurier and with Winston Graham’s Poldark books and the TV series. I know it did for me.  I grew up on the original BBC dramatization of Poldark, though my teenage heart was mostly given to Dr Enys rather than to Ross. When the more recent dramatization came out I felt it couldn’t possibly match the first one but it carved its own niche in our affections as well as raising interest in the ancient skill of scything. And as for Daphne Du Maurier’s books, well, Frenchman’s Creek is still up there on my all-time favourites list, and Jamaica Inn not so far behind. Both Du Maurier and Winston Graham created the atmosphere of historic Cornwall so evocatively that I was desperate to visit (which was neither quick nor easy 40 years ago from Yorkshire!)

An Incredible Discovery

Anne Gracie here, very excited to be sharing with you all an amaaaazing and incredible discovery I've recently made. As some of you may know, over the last few years I've been digging into genealogy and my family history — and have even done a bit of DNA tracing — and wow!  

I could hardly believe it when this information started to turn up, so I said nothing about it for quite a while, but little by little the evidence has mounted, and once I told a few of the wenches about my discoveries, they also got excited and chipped in their bits and pieces. It's been an extraordinary journey, but now, at last, we've agreed to go public.

Minor characters and their inspiration

Nicola here. I’ve always found writing minor characters to be fun. They add context and depth to a story. Sometimes they run away with it and demand a story of their own. In House of Shadows I have an “offstage” character, Lady Evershot, who is modelled on a famous Georgian aristocrat, Elizabeth Berkeley, and as this is Women’s History Month I thought it would be fun to talk about Lady Elizabeth, who was most definitely a woman ahead of her time.

Lady Elizabeth Berkeley was the daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and married the 6^th Baron Craven when she was 16 years old, before he inherited his title. It was not a love match and later, in her memoirs, she claimed she was too young to have made an informed decision and that she gave in to family pressure, which is an interesting insight into the workings of the marriage mart in Georgian England.

The young couple lived at Ashdown House for a couple of years, their two eldest children being born there. Alas the Craven marriage was not a happy one; from the earliest times Lady Elizabeth was complaining that her husband was uncultured and uncouth, a man who read nothing but the newspapers, whereas she was more creative, an artist and a writer. After not many years they drifted apart and she had an affair with the French ambassador whilst her husband set up a mistress who styled herself Lady Craven, much to the real Lady Craven’s fury.  Matters became so bitter between them and the scandal so well-known in society that King George III himself stepped in to order the Cravens to be more discreet. No one minded them having affairs; the only criticism was for the public mud-slinging!

Eventually Lady Craven left her husband and travelled abroad, visiting Europe, Russia and Turkey, travelling in her own, luxuriously appointed travelling carriage with plenty of servants to ease her way. She wrote letters home describing her experiences and the sights and sounds of her journeys, an intrepid female explorer long before women thought that lone travelling was respectable, safe or appealing. The author Sybil Rosenfeld, in her book Temples of Thespis, describes Lady Craven’s subsequent life:

“She travelled about Europe for some years until she finally settled at the court of the Margrave of Anspach in 1787 as his “adopted sister”. In 1791 only a month after she heard of the death of her husband she married the Margrave in Lisbon and persuaded him to give up the ruling of his principality and retire with her and his fortune to England. Her precipitancy was considered indecent and, on her return, she found herself cold-shouldered by the court and high society. The Margrave, a stolid German who seems only to have wished for a peaceful life, purchased Brandenburgh House a country villa on the bank of the Thames at Hammersmith and spent the rest of his days there. His wife built a theatre in the grounds where she could entertain him and at the same time indulge in her favourite past time of taking the centre stage….

Despite the fact that the Margrave was related to King George III his wife was not received at court as she was considered too scandalous. Nothing daunted, she spent her time at the races and in organising private theatricals, which were often performances of plays she had written herself. The theatre at Brandenburg House was built as a faux castle in the manner of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill and the productions were lavish and extravagant with the Margravine frequently taking a leading role. As a larger than life figure of the era, she was lampooned by the caricaturists of the time and described my Walpole as entertaining but “infinitely indiscreet.”

Perhaps private theatricals suited the former Lady Craven’s need to be the focus of attention and gave her the opportunity to assume a number of different roles and act out her fantasies. In that she was not alone since it was a popular entertainment in upper class Georgian society. Nevertheless she snubbed her eldest son’s wife who was a “real” actress, Louisa Brunton. The two were said cordially to detest one another. Perhaps it was envy on the Margravine’s part rather than snobbery though, although Louisa was considered a great beauty rather than a great actress.

The Margravine was reconciled with her sons, the eldest of whom became the First Earl of Craven of the 2^nd Creation, but she and her daughters never spoke. Her second daughter was Maria, Countess of Sefton, who was one of the patronesses of Almack’s and said to be a stickler for respectability. One can only imagine the impression her scandalous mother’s behaviour might have made on her.

The Margrave of Anspach died in 1806 and Elizabeth moved to Naples where she died in 1828. There are still two roads named after her in Hammersmith, London!

In House of Shadows Lady Evershot is a more sinister and less likeable figure than Elizabeth Craven, although she has the same questionable sense of morality and the same love of horse-racing. She never appears in the book but her presence over-shadows the Regency element of the story and certainly affects her son, who is dependent upon her for money.

Do you have a favourite minor character who appears in a book – or doesn’t appear but is still a presence?

The Home of the Heart

By Mary Jo

A couple of weeks ago the Wenches got to chatting behind the scenes about what places feel like home, and the answers were interesting. In some cases, home is where we were born and raised even if we're not there anymore. In other cases, it's a place one has moved to and then claimed for oneself. It could be a place you've never lived. Here's what the Wenches have to say:

Andrea/Cara:
I must not be very adventurous at heart, for I’ve lived in New England all my life. (There were a number of years in New York City, but I always felt I had one foot in the country, as it’s only a hop, skip and jump to the Connecticut border.) Or maybe it’s just I that I feel a great affinity to the stark and simple beauty of the area—the colonial clapboard houses of the old towns, the rugged little harbors, the meandering stone walls, the sense of history around every bend. There’s a quiet, reserved air to this part of the country—a good vibe for an introvert like me.

New Englanders are a pretty taciturn lot, perhaps a vestige of the area’s Puritan heritage, but they are also observant, and given to introspection—think Henry David Thoreau and Emily Dickenson. I feel at home here, despite having traveled all over the world. I love the stubborn sense of place, the old-school traditions, the independent spirit. And I love the changing seasons—especially a New England fall, with its bright blaze of colors and crisp apple-scented air.

 

Going Dutch at Dyrham Park!

Nicola here. Today I’m doing one of my virtual tours of an English stately home. On Monday, author Anna Campbell and I went on a day trip, as we tend to do when she is over visiting from Australia. This time our destination was Dyrham Park, a seventeenth century house near Bath which looks like a miniature version of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke of Devonshire. Dyrham was built at a very interesting time by a very interesting man: William Blathwayt, who started life as the son of a debt-ridden gentleman and ended a very rich man who made his fortune in the service of several monarchs.

Dyrham was built in the 1690s, when the Stuarts were on the throne but the dynasty had changed direction somewhat after James II was deposed and his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William had become joint King and Queen. William Blathwayt was very much a supporter of King William and he used the new house he was building at Dyrham Park to demonstrate his loyalty.

At a time when most houses were built out of local materials, Dyrham was an “international” house as William Blathwayt was able to use his extensive contacts in England and abroad to provide the raw materials. He ordered marble from Genoa, pine and spruce from Norway, and black walnut and red cedar from North America. In terms of furnishings, William had experienced first hand the fashionable style of the court. He imported a trunk of luxury items from the Netherlands including various printed silks and cottons with exotic designs, fine damask silks and crimson velvets. The interior of the house looks very rich and bright today; in candle light it must have seemed very lustrous and luxurious.

My favourite part of the house was the staircase, which was constructed out of black walnut and red cedar from Virginia and Carolina. Other American timber used in the construction was pine and cypress. It’s astonishing to look at the staircase today and imagine the journey made by those timbers all the way from the rivers of North America across the Atlantic to Bristol and London. The transport caused lots of problems because often the planks 18 – 24 feet in length, were too large for the ships or the captains charged huge fees to transport it! When some of the timber was brought up the Thames from London, the wood had cost £40 and the transport cost £10, an exorbitant sum. However Blathwayt was a rich man and wanted the best for his house – and the best was what he got!

The strong Dutch influence in the house is still visible today in the gilt leather panelling on the walls and the many pieces of Delft ceramics. A number of the paintings are also by Dutch artists including the amazing “A view through the house” by Samuel van Hoogstraten, which captures a moment when a door opens and the viewer sees the world within. I loved this picture and wanted to step into it – or write a story set inside it! Another gorgeous picture was of a cocoa tree and a roasting hit; it illustrates the process of turning cacao into chocolate!

William’s library was the jewel of his house, a sentiment that we could totally endorse! He had a huge collection of books on law, history, religion, geography, politics and philosophy. He also had a number of dictionaries – as a fluent Dutch speaker, which was very rare in England, he was very interested in languages.

The furniture on display in the house still contains a number of items from William Blathwayt’s original 17^th century collection, most notably the state bed. This is a towering wooden four poster covered in crimson and gold silk, velvet and satin. Like so many beds from the period it looked very narrow and uncomfortable to me, more a single bed than a double, let alone a king or Queen size. The legend is that was ordered to encourage Queen Anne to come and visit when she was in Bath. Sadly she didn’t call!

King William and Queen Mary were keen gardeners and one of the ways for courtiers to curry favour was by copying their garden style, which Blathwayt did to great effect at Dyrham. Even on a dull day in winter the gardens looked gorgeous, with exotic trees, water cascades and elegant walkways. Blathwayt used both the trees and the statuary to declare his loyalty to the king;  there is an orangery at Dyrham full of orange trees, a not particularly subtle tribute to the fact that William III was from the House of Orange! A statue of Hercules also draws comparisons with the king, suggesting that he is a courageous and virtuous hero. There’s nothing like a bit of flattery to ingratiate yourself with the monarch!

My favourite aspect of the garden, though, was the fact that William, a businessman to the last, had declared that the estate must be as self-sufficient as possible when it came to fruit and vegetables. He was quite ahead of his time with this ecological view and grew a range of apples and pear trees for cider and perry production, quince for jam and various other “organic” crops! He came unstuck with the mulberry bush, however, as he had planned to cultivate white mulberries to encourage silkworms but unfortunately he imported the black mulberry instead. It still bears fruit but the silkworms aren’t interested!

Visiting Dyrham Park was gorgeous but I did come away wondering about the concept of demonstrating your loyalty to a person or a cause through the way you decorate your home. Presumably if William Blathwayt had fallen out of favour with the King he would have had to re-decorate his house and re-design his garden!

If you were to design your house or garden as a tribute to a famous person, who would it be? Would you honour them with plants, statues, pictures or something unique and different?