Back to Top

Monthly Archives: July 2006

Period Views of America

Updated on by

In honor of the USA’s Independence Day, here are some of the funniest or most interesting period quotes I could find (mostly British) about the American Revolution:

Tom Paine, 1776: England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally origin.


Lady Sarah Lennox, 1776: In short, I think there is no deciding who is precisely wrong and who is precisely right. Only two things, I think, won’t bear dispute: 1st, that those who cause most lives to be lost are the worst people; secondly, that the Bostonians, being chiefly Presbyterians and from the north of Ireland, are daily proved to be very, very bad people, being quarrelsome, discontented, hypocritical, enthusiastical, lying people.

Tom Paine, 1776: The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on that head.

Lady Sarah Lennox, 1776: I grow a greater rebel every day upon principle.

British Colonel Allan Maclean, 1777: Washington this whole winter never had more than 7,000 men in the Jersies, where we had 16,000, yet we have been tossed and kicked about most amazingly, all our forage parties constantly attacked, and tho’ we generally beat them we lost a great many good men.


James Boswell, writing to Samuel Johnson, 1778: What do you say to Taxation no Tyranny, now, after Lord North’s declaration, or confession, or whatever else his conciliatory speech should be called? I never differed from you in politicks but upon two points,–the Middlesex Election, and the Taxation of the Americans by the British Houses of Representatives. There is a charm in the word Parliament, so I avoid it. As I am a steady and a warm Tory, I regret that the King does not see it to be better for him to receive constitutional supplies from his American subjects by the voice of their own assemblies, where his Royal Person is represented, than through the medium of his British subjects.

Samuel Johnson, 1778: I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.


William Cowper, 1783: On the other hand, the Americans, who, if they had contented themselves with a struggle for lawful liberty, would have deserved applause, seem to me to have incurred the guilt of parricide, by renouncing their parent, by making her ruin their favorite object, and by associating themselves with their worst enemy, for the accomplishment of their purpose.

So, what are your reactions? Do you find Lady Sarah Lennox’s prejudice against Presbyterians as bizarre as I do? How about Johnson’s loathing for all Americans? Do you agree with Paine that William the Conqueror gave the English monarchy a “very paltry rascally origin”?

Happy Fourth of July to our American readers!

Cara
Cara King — www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — Booksellers’ Best Finalist for Best Regency of 2005!

Posted in Research | Tagged | 5 Replies

Diane’s Writing Life…and Beowulf & Grendel

Updated on by

I may have mentioned recently finishing Warner book #3, untitled and awaiting a publication date. This is Blake’s story, one of the hero’s friends in The Marriage Bargain. Right when I was tearing out my hair and gnashing my teeth to finish Blake’s story, my copy edits came for Innocence & Impropriety, the story of Rose from A Reputable Rake. I finished those in a record (for me) two days, then had to jump in to the next Mills & Boon, following a character from Innocence & Impropriety. That done, I decided I ought to plot the next Warner book, too, because I’m going to NYC to see my editor this coming Friday (and to see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and Beowulf & Grendel in the movie theatre). The next Warner book is Wolfe’s story.

I like to start my books off with something really exciting, a task that gets harder and harder to do, but sometimes turns out to spark ideas for the rest of the plot. I may also have mentioned that story ideas do not exactly flood my brain and keep me awake at night.

For my big bang openings for Harlequin/Mills & Boon I’ve done lovemaking in a gaming hell (hee hee, pardon the pun), a Gretna Green wedding, and an attack in Hyde Park. This time I decided it would be nice to put my hero and heroine in a shipwreck. So I did my usual thing and bought as many books on shipwrecks that I could find and afford.

I bought Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Eras by Terence Grocott (1197 Stackpole Books), and Life Before the Mast by Jon E. Lewis, ed.(2001, Castle Books). I already owned A Sea of Words by Dean King (1997, Henry Holt and Co., Inc). And, of course, I tore through whatever I could find on the internet. The shipwreck scene was a lot of fun to write and I hope it comes off sounding real. I also hope my editor approves the story, because now I am dying to write it.

For Warner my big openings have included childbirth, a duel in which the hero is slain, and a tryst with a mysterious French thief (Blake’s story), but I need something very exotic for Wolfe.
I want to begin Wolfe’s story in India, where he will travel to learn about his Indian roots–he’s one quarter Indian and his father is (gasp) in Trade. I’d already collected some books to help: The East India Company by Antony Wild (1999, Harper Collins); Begums, Thugs & White Mughals, the Journals of Fanny Parkes (2002, Eland Publishing); White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India by William Dalrymple (2002, Penquin Books). I found Original Letters from India by Eliza Fay, EM Forster, ed, (1986, Hogarth Press) when I was in Alabama for my High School reunion, and I just bought Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India by Lawrence James (1997, St. Martins Press). But none of these books were giving me my huge opening.

Scouring the internet about India in the nineteenth century, I came across several first hand accounts of sati (or suttee, as it is sometimes spelled), the practice of a wife throwing herself on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband and burning alive. Now that will make a bang up opening! The heroine being forced into the flames when the hero rides to the rescue, snatching her from the consuming fire. I hope my editor loves the idea, because I really am itching to write that scene!

Now, I don’t want you to think I will actually read all of the books I mentioned above. I must keep up my reputation as the world’s worst read romance author. I do read bits of the books, though, unless one really captures my interest and I read every word. I read enough to tell me if my story idea will work and to give me enough knowledge of the topic to at least take a stab at writing it. Then as I write, I go back to the books and the internet and research whatever I need to at that moment. This may not be the most efficient way to do it, but it has worked for me so far.

I keep all my notes on the computer. I copy information from the internet. I might even summarize something from a book. I don’t make a collage for the story, but I do have a page I always call “Names” where I put down the facts and backstory for the main characters. I find a photo to use for my hero and heroine. Quite by accident, the photo I chose for the hero of this next Mills & Boon was one of Gerard Butler, chosen before I became one of the converted and actually knew who he was. For the heroine, I chose Jennifer Connelly, because she looks vulnerable but has strength underneath. For the Warner book, Wolfe is an actor named Adrian Green and the heroine is a beautiful Indian actress named Bridget Monynahan. But forget these images if you prefer to visualize on your own. The books will not be out until 2007 so you have lots of time to forget.

I don’t know when I’ll get the go ahead for the Mills & Boon but I expect to find out about the Warner book and Wolfe this Friday. If my editor doesn’t like it, at least I’ll still get to feast my eyes on another fictional character that night – Beowulf, played by Gerard Butler!

I’ll let you know how it goes next week.
Cheers,
Diane

Posted in Regency, Research, Risky Book Talk, Writing | Tagged , | 14 Replies

Eccentrics

Updated on by


A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my Father’s Day gift dilemma. I solved that impossible-to-buy-for problem by going to Best Buy and getting the DVDs of the first four seasons of Northern Exposure. Now, I confess this was a gift for me as much as for my dad. I adore this show, and have been having enormous fun re-watching favorite episodes. I’ve always thought that if Cicely, Alaska was a real place I would SO move there. A little town off in its own isolated world, far from the traffic snarls and Super Wal Marts. Where the rugged-individualist inhabitants you might suspect to be rednecks are actually quirky intellectuals, prone to waxing philosophical about poetry, astronomy, string theory. Where there are all kinds of funky festivals and a wide variety of kooks, including Ed, who kind of reminds me of my high school boyfriend, though HE was a jazz musician and not an amateur film director/shaman. There was still the leather jacket and that weird, vague affability. I would like to run a funky little bookstore, eat breakfast at the Brick, talk over Kant and Nietzche with Chris In The Morning. Sure, I really hate the cold, but it never seems to really get chilly there, except to Joel in his absurdly large parka…

My point, sort of, is this–eccentrics. I talked about them a bit on my own blog yesterday. People who are unusual, erratic, unpredictable, who march to the beat of their own drummer and all that. We sometimes encounter them in Regency romances. You know–the Old Broad, who wears giant purple turbans and says crazy things in the middle of Almacks. The bluestocking heroine who doesn’t want to marry because it would interfere with being an historian/a sculptor/raising Shar-Pei puppies. Or the heroine’s father who neglects his family to perform experiments with ball lightening in the garden, leaving the heroine to take care of all her brothers and sisters by herself. I love those characters.

I decided to do this post on Famous Eccentrics of the Regency. But then I realized that it might be easier to do a list of the Few Non-Eccentrics! There are just too many colorful characters in this period. I’m sure there must have been something in that watery Almacks lemonade we’re always reading about. Just a few:

–Prinny, of course. And wife number two, Princess Caroline. And almost all his friends. And several of his brothers. And most of his sisters. Oh, and his mistresses, too.
–Architect Sir John Soane. Anyone who has been to his museum can see right away this was a class-A hoarder. At least he hoarded some good stuff, like Hogarths and Roman bronzes from Pompeii. Unlike my own crazy aunt, who just hoardes cats, plastic grocery sacks, and old bottles of nail polish, but who inexplicably gave away most of her great designer clothes from the 1950s and ’60s. Ahhhh, relatives. But that’s another post. 🙂
–Caro Lamb. There was probably no one like her for causing amusing and scandalous public scenes at parties. Stalking and tantrums and bonfires, oh my!
–Oh, and that leads to Byron, of course. And Shelley. Crackpots for the ages.
–Sir John Lade, who was for a time in charge of Prinny’s riding stables. He liked to dress and talk like a groom, and was married to a woman named “Letty,” who started out as a servant in a brothel. Later she became mistress to a highwayman known as “16 String Jack,” until he landed at the gallows. Then the Duke of York. Not much of a judge of women, that one.
–Beau Brummel. The original metrosexual and scourge of improperly starched cravats.
–And one of my favorites, WJC Scott-Bentinck, Duke of Portland. He lived from 1800-79, so just barely fits in “our” period, but for sheer mental loopiness he just can’t be beat. I first read about him Bill Bryson’s hilarious Notes From a Small Island (Bryson, another fun eccentric I’m sure, has several other equally riotous books. If you haven’t read him, get to the bookstore right now and buy A Walk in the Woods or Neither Here Nor There! Go, go!!!). WJC took his ancestral pile, Welbeck Abbey, and built a 15-mile series of tunnels and passageways underneath, mainly so he could avoid all human contact. As Bryson puts it, “When the Duke died, his heirs found all of the aboveground rooms devoid of furnishings except for one chamber in the middle of which sat the Duke’s commode. The main hall was mysteriously floorless. Most of the rooms were painted pink. The one upstairs room in which the Duke resided was packed to the ceiling with hundreds of green boxes, each of which contained a single dark brown wig. This was, in short, a man worth getting to know.” (pg. 167)

And that’s just the tip of the nutty iceberg…

So, I say hurrah for eccentrics! They make our dullish world a little more colorful, interesting, and fun. Who are some of your favorite crazies in books and in life?

Posted in Reading, Regency, Research, TV and Film, Writing | Tagged , | 14 Replies